By Dan Riddington-Young, IT Support
TurningPoint is an electronic voting system that helps make your presentations, lectures, and training sessions, interactive, more engaging, more agile and therefore more effective.
Content can be easily created using the TurningPoint software which is a simple plugin to PowerPoint that you can easily install yourself on any staff PC. This video gives instructions about how to install it.
Ways to use it
You can create a complete presentation of questions or add question slides to existing PowerPoint presentations. Various types of question can be created including multiple choice, true/false, essay or a simple ice breaker to get the session started. During the presentation, when the voting slide comes up, the students are asked to use the voting keypads. The results are then displayed immediately on the presentation slide, giving you instant feedback, and the results can also be saved as a report. This is especially useful for assessing students’ comprehension of a presentation so far, which can also be retained for comparison purposes over time.
Fixed voting pads or portable ones
There are some fixed installations, where the voting keypads are built in to each writing table or seat. These are available in the Peak Lecture theatre at City Campus and Herbert Wing 1 at Collegiate Crescent, with more installations coming next year.
We also have portable packs that consist of 40 handheld voting keypads and a USB receiver that just plugs in to the lectern PC. These are available for advanced booking and can currently be requested via the IT Help desk (extension 3333) and collected from either Church House at City Campus or 51/53 Broomgrove at Collegiate Crescent.
Feedback about VotingPoint
We’ve already had some good feedback about how useful the system is in teaching. The first lecturer to use it said: ‘Please pass on my thanks to everyone who worked to get it running for us – it worked perfectly this morning and I think that it added a great deal to the session.’
More information is available here.
