uRespond: iPad as Interactive, Personal Response System

Personal response systems are quickly becoming indispensable formative assessment tools in many college-level chemistry courses. With the use of such devices, students are provided with invaluable insights into the skills perceived by the instructor as important, while concurrently, the instructor can gather feedback as to how well students have mastered those skills. In graphically intensive subjects such as chemistry, however, their use is severely limited by the input options afforded by current devices. It is often difficult to distill graphing and structure creation tasks into questions that can be answered with short strings of numbers or via multiple choice. We have developed the uRespond system—a touch-based personal response system that allows students to use iPads or more traditional computers to draw graphs and structures—to address this critical, formative assessment gap.