IR Clickers are a bad idea (Score 1)

At Kent State University serveral rooms have been outfited with IR units for the clickers. They dont work well. The manufacturers reported to my instructors that fluorescent lights messup the signal from the clickers. Also the range of the clickers dont allow for large lecture halls of 250 people. While the tracking software was able to hold 250 students "profiles" the performance in the classroom was slow. I hear there are programs that would allow for PDAs with 802.11b to function as clickers but i dont know any students that are going to buy a $150 PDA for a intro business class (my clicker was for an intro business class of about 250 people). the system we used is called CPS and is at http://www.einstruction.com As for the software you would need to have some sort of database to create "profiles for each student..their name, clicker ID, and scores/data entered. You would need to be able to have a display to show if the clicker input was captured.