TurningPoint® Case Study

Bible Extension Course Program

BACKGROUND

The Bible Extension Course Program (BECP) provides a supplement of Bible Course Electives. This non-accredited Bible teaching program offers students a variety of Bible studies conducted by qualified instructors. Since 1975, the BECP Ministries and Clifton Carpenter, the Director, have served the Greater St. Louis, Missouri Area's general public, Sunday school teachers and church leaders.

THE CHALLENGE

Having taught Bible classes for more than 35 years, Clifton was interested in presenting his classes differently to his adult students. Clifton stated, "With the available technology, I wanted to present the Bible Study material in a fresh, new way." The two greatest challenges in his Bible study classes were assessment and encouraging student participation and interaction.

THE SOLUTION

Clifton discovered Turning Technologies, LLC and its audience response systems while searching the Internet in July 2004. Clifton downloaded a trial version of TurningPoint, so he could learn for himself what interactive PowerPoint® presentations could offer his classes. After experiencing the ease of the software, he soon purchased TurningPoint and his first set of five response pads in October of 2004. Currently Clifton has a 24 response pads system and is very excited about expanding to at least 40 response pads in the future.

Clifton said that since using TurningPoint both student assessment and participation "have gotten easier." TurningPoint's easy integration with Microsoft® Office products reduced the learning curve for Clifton, who was already an intermediate PowerPoint user. He was able to create his interactive PowerPoint presentations quickly and easily with TurningPoint.

Clifton believes that TurningPoint had a significant impact on his presentations and encouraged more student interaction. His students were excited to use the response pads. In fact, his adult students acted "like children" when using Turning Technologies' interactive audience polling system. "Response to TurningPoint has been favorable among all of my students." Clifton felt that, "the purpose for using TurningPoint has been to create interaction, along with ensuring that each student captures the important information from the presentations." Clifton's main reason for working with TurningPoint was the interactive audience polling system, and the variety of TurningPoint interactions available allowed him to expand his classroom techniques. Clifton said, "The multiple choice questions rather than yes/no questions have revealed more about the student's comprehension."

In January 2005 during a communications workshop in Des Moines, Iowa TurningPoint enabled him to better assess student understanding. Clifton created an interactive presentation using PowerPoint and TurningPoint for 16 participants to collect evaluation data. Participants responded to questions in his presentation with individual response pads. "The [TurningPoint] system replaced the old hard-copy method. The goal to get immediate responses was successful." He also felt that the ability to print and email the results to others was extremely helpful in the assessment process.

THE RESULTS

Clifton's students are enthusiastic to work with the response pads, and the quick assessment of comprehension has helped him improve instruction. TurningPoint also provides efficient tools for reporting student responses and sharing that information with others via e-mail. Overall, TurningPoint's interactive audience polling system has facilitated significant improvement in the classroom interaction between the presenter and the students of the Bible Extension Course Program.