What are Electronic Voting Systems (EVS)?

Sometimes referred to as audience response systems (ARS), EVS provides participants in a lecture or presentation with a method of participation. Participants will generally be given an electronic handset (sometimes called a ‘clicker’), allowing them to respond to prompts from the presenter. You can, for example, test understanding with multiple choice questioning, or with certain systems invite free-text answers, which work well for feedback purposes.

Because EVS provides live feedback from participants, it is possible for lecturers/facilitators to act on responses, perhaps by providing more detail about a topic or explaining a concept using a different analogy.

Promethean ActivExpression

The University College has 64 ActivExpression handsets which staff can use for audience participation during lectures/seminars. ActivExpression is designed to work with the Promethean software ‘Active Inspire’, which should be located on laptops connected to Interactive Whiteboards. Active Inspire allows staff to create presentations which include question pages, although Active Inspire also includes a lightweight program which allows for spontaneous questioning (and can be run alongside a normal PowerPoint presentation or software demonstration).

Active Inspire, and therefore the ActivExpression handsets, support the following types of questioning:

• Multiple choice
• Likert scales
• Ordering/sorting
• Numerical response
• Free text response