Evaluating the usefulness of an audience response e-tool in the context of teaching tomorrow's health professionals

Innovations such as the commercial audience response system KEEpad (Turning Point™) are being promoted as enhancing face to face teaching and learning 'creating a dynamic, interactive classroom' (Turningpoint 2006). The system records student responses to multiple-choice questions, produced on hand-held key pads, which are automatically collated through KEEpad software and displayed in Power Point™, and has been suggested to "provide entertainment or friendly competition in the class and thereby increase student attention" (Slain, et al. 2004). To date, published studies have focused on the use of these technologies in large lectures whereby staff use these technologies as a vehicle to introduce interactive teaching methods.