Educator Highlight

Every day we hear about new and innovative ways our customers are integrating response technology into their classrooms. These stories were so good we just couldn’t keep them to ourselves. That's why we developed our "Educator Highlights."

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Jan Costenbader
Manager, Classroom Technology & Lecturer, Mathematics/Statistics
California State University, Chico

Jan Costenbader serves as Manager of Classroom Technologies at California State University, Chico. He has been providing assistance to faculty members regarding all technology infrastructure on campus for the past 4 years. Jan also teaches part-time as a member of the Mathematics Department and is seeking to transition to full time academic staff in the near future. Prior to his position in academics, Jan spent 30 years in industry working for Apple, making his position in classroom technology not far from his roots.

As Manager of Classroom Technologies, Jan was presented with the task of creating a requirements definition and an acquisition plan for a campus standardized student response system. After reviewing several student response providers, the Turning Technologies response package was selected. Having led the initial search, Jan was one of the first to immediately implement the technology into his math course. Jan's knowledge of the technology behind the system and the pedagogical uses for the system made him the ideal go-to person for faculty during the initial rollout. He was even nicknamed "Mr. Clicker", which still sticks today.

Due to state budget constraints over the past year, Jan's class sizes have increased from approximately 35 students to 180, making his need to actively engage students in active learning even greater. "The clickers have become an absolute necessity in my courses now. Engaging students in math is typically a challenge given even normal circumstances. With the larger class sizes, the clickers have become invaluable in keeping students engaged and focused on what is going on," explained Jan. With its immediate feedback capabilities, Jan has been able to gauge student understanding at the point of instruction giving him insight into student comprehension of specific concepts.

With years of experience at Apple, it's not hard to understand why Jan is a Mac® user. That being said, Jan has found the TurningPoint AnyWhere student response solution to be the ideal system for his courses. TurningPoint AnyWhere is a floating toolbar that essentially "sits" on top of any application, making it ideal for users who's curriculum isn’t tied down to standard PowerPoint® presentations. "I'm a Mac guy. I use Keynote all the time as well as multiple other applications including web pages. TurningPoint AnyWhere allows me to ask questions and poll using whichever application I happen to be using that day," said Jan.

Being a professor of Mathematics, Jan needed a response device for his students that could handle numeric input. Both the ResponseCard XR and ResponseWare clicker solutions were chosen for Jan's courses because of their alphanumeric input capabilities. Approximately 70% of Jan's students are currently using ResponseCard XR as their primary response device. The other 30% have elected to use ResponseWare, a software application found on the Apple App Store that installs on a student's iPhone®, iPod® touch or BlackBerry® smartphone. The application transforms student devices into advanced student response clickers. "Students really love the ResponseWare option. It's becoming more popular due to its cost and the fact that students always have their phones or iPods on them. I think ResponseWare is going to grow leaps and bounds as more students move to smartphones," commented Jan.

Overall both students and faculty alike enjoy using Turning Technologies' response technology during class. In a recently conducted survey, over 80% of students said they enjoyed the use of the student response system and that it helped in their ability to grasp and understand concepts covered during class. Faculty have had equally impressed reactions to the technology. "The system has been able to provide faculty with a level of student engagement that can't be created any other way," said Jan. The use of student response has created a newfound excitement in the classroom and has encouraged student discussions and peer instruction.