Interactive Technology Integrated into MCC Social Sciences Classes



The clicker that MCC-Penn Valley social sciences students will use to mark their answer choices.



A screen shot of a sample question that students can answer with their clickers.

  

When students come back in the fall for their social sciences classes this fall at MCC-Penn Valley, they will be greeted by clickers and interactive PowerPoint presentations. On Tuesday, July 26, Dr. Karen Curls, head of Penn Valley’s Social Sciences Division, along with the division instructors, were trained on using Turning Point, a program from Turning Technologies, a company that specilializes in audience response systems.  The training was facillitated by Ben Bestic of Turning Technologies and Jim Beachner, the Health Science Institute Network Coordinator.

How Does it Work?
Turning Point is a program designed to work with MS PowerPoint to display questions and multiple-choice answer choices on instructor' lecture slides.  After viewing the question, students are allowed to use a palm-sized LCD-powered clicker to anonymously select an answer in the alloted time.  Once that time is up, the instructor can prompt an animation to display the correct answer or display a bar graph that shows how many students chose each answer.

Penn Valley students gain civic training for midterm election

The Social Science Division at MCC-Penn Valley recently participated in the College Poll Worker Project. Three classes in the Social Science Division were trained by the Kansas City Board of Elections to serve as poll workers and election judges for the midterm election. Many students worked the polls on Election Day and were granted extra credit or project points by their instructors Dr. Karen Curls, Deborah Scott and Lyle Gibson.

The project was a partnership with Missouri Western State University and the Kansas City Board of Election. The initiative was part of a grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The focus of the project was to encourage young people to serve as poll judges. It also aimed to enhance student’s understanding of the election process and the value of the right to vote as well as increase the pool of skilled poll workers during this time of transitioning from paper to electronic voting.