and Analyzer
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Acquisition
| Collects responses from students, displays slides, histograms, and saves responses to a file for grading with Analyzer. |
This is a guided tour of the H-ITT Acquisition application. These step-by-step instructions are a great place to start to introduce yourself to use the application. Note, if you are new to using the H-ITT system we recommend that you assign one of your teaching assistants to handle the H-ITT operations. This would include making sure the base units are properly installed in your classroom, making sure the software is run properly while collecting data from the students, making sure the students register their remote's unique identification number properly, etc.
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Step 1: Starting screen
This is the initial screen you will be greeted with upon starting the application. The simple intuitive interface is designed to get you up and running in your class day-after-day with minimal fuss. The program stores the settings and class files for multiple courses or sections in separate and easy-to-get-at locations. This is important for saving your unique software settings as well as keeping the class files separated. Once the instructor initializes their class on the first day there is very little else to do but point and click to collect responses. Its powerful response collection engine allows for receivers to be connected to multiple COM ports on the computer allowing for the fastest possible data throughput of any response system on the market. In addition, this ability can greatly simplify room wiring since most computers tend to be centrally located. |
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Step 2: Specify receiver COM port
Make sure the software knows you have a receiver connected. In the middle of the screen there is a section entitled Receivers and Port Settings. Below this make sure your COM port is listed and that the Receiver type is correctly identified. If you have more than one COM port and are not sure which one your receiver is connected to, simply set all to the same receiver type. If you plan to run in keyboard mode, where responses are simulated with the keyboard instead of remotes, you can ignore this step. |
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Step 3: Creating a Class
Create a class by clicking on the create class link. A dialog box will appear and ask you for some information. Fill in your class name and your name. In addition enter your remote ID number in the instructor remote ID field. By doing this you can answer the questions along with your students and educate the software about the correct answer. |
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Step 4: Starting your Class
Your class name should now appear near the top center of the screen. Click on the class name you entered to run the acquisition program for this class. Note, you need to make a different class name for each different class you will be teaching this particular semester. When you click on your class name, the majority of the screen should appear black; this is the ready state for collecting data from the students. |
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Step 5: Acquiring responses from students
Imagine writing a question on the chalkboard, then click the green button near the top of the screen to start the data collection process. Fire in some answers with your remotes and notice the last three digits of your remote IDs appear on the screen. Looking at the screen for the ID number only needs to be done when first setting up your class and testing the system. When the students fire in, their two-way remote's green light will turn on, then they can feel confident their answer has been saved in the computer for grading purposes. Fire in the correct answer with the instructor remote or use the keyboard and notice your ID box has appeared. When you are using the system for the very first time in your class, have only a small sub-set of students fire in their answer at a time. Notice the counter in the upper left corner of the screen and make sure that this number corresponds to the number of students that just fired in. |
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Step 6: Viewing the Histogram
Make sure everyone has gotten their answer into the computer and then click the red button near the top to stop the data collection and reveal the histogram. Here is the real power of the system. If 80% of your class is correct, then you can move on satisfied the students understand this material. However, if less than 50% were correct then you need to spend more time on this material. Repeat this question and answer session as many times as desired. |
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Step 7 (optional): Displaying Slides
The Acquisition application can display slides made in a variety of formats including, Power Point, Word, PDF, Excel, PNG, JPG, GIF, H-ITT XML, Blackboard XML, Text. In addition it can act as a web browser and display any web page. To enable this feature click on the options button on the tool bar (it looks like a sheet of paper) and click on the Slides tab. Then select the type of slides you want to display. |
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Step 8: Saving Data, Stopping Class, and Exiting the Program
The responses collected from the students are always saved to a file. There is no need to worry about saving them and the filename is created automatically and saved in the class directory that was created when you created your class. Once you have asked enough questions simply click the blue back arrow and this will stop the class and return you to the starting page. At this point you are ready to use the Analyzer program to grade the responses and associate student names with the remote ID numbers. Go to the guided tour of the Analyzer |
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Analyzer
| Grades files saved with the Acquisition application, associates student names with remote ID numbers, builds roster via e-mail, exports points to spreadsheet or grade book and e-mails students their individual response reports. |
This is a guided tour of the H-ITT Analyzer application. These step-by-step instructions are a great place to start to introduce yourself to use the application
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Step 1: Starting screen
Upon starting the Analyzer you are greeted with a screen which is similar to the Acquisition program. To grade the class files you created with the Acquisition program you must first add the class. Once the class is added you can simply click on its name after each class to grade the student responses. |
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Step 2: Adding a Class
Click on add class and you will be presented with a directory browser window. Browse to the directory where your class files were saved Typically My Documents\My H-ITT Files\your class name. |
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Step 3: Answer Key View
Click on the class name that you just added in the list. A new screen will appear that displays a list of questions asked and their answers (i.e. the answer key). As more class files are created each day the list will grow, giving you an instant snapshot of all the questions asked throughout the semester. |
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Step 4: Changing answer or points for a question
If you used the instructor remote feature then the responses have been graded. If you want to change the correct answer or the points values for a particular question click on the question number. A new grading window will appear. This window will allow you to change many aspects of the question. Each question can have different point values for correct or incorrect as well as multiple correct answers. |
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Step 5: Build a roster to associate names with remote ID numbers
To see how the students names will be assigned to the remote ID numbers, let's run another program to build your roster file. Open a program like notepad on your computer. On the first line enter the following information "name,student ID,remote ID". Simply make up a fake name and a fake student ID number for this. However, you must enter the real remote ID number of the remotes you were using in the H-ITT Acquisition program above (all six digits). Repeat for all the remote IDs that you have. Save this file in the same folder where your class files are located and name this file roster.csv, and exit the notepad program. |
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Step 6: Importing the roster
After saving the roster you must import it into the Analyzer. Select the menu item Roster then Load/Refresh Roster. A window will appear asking you for the roster filename and roster file format. Check the "Use Roster File" checkbox and click browse to browse to the location of the file you just created. Using the pull down menu just below the filename, select the top most file format. Before closing the window click on the Student points tab and check "show student name" and "show student ID" and click okay. Now you can see the student's names and their YTD points. The H-ITT Analyzer also has a powerful tool which can build a roster for you automatically by using your e-mail account. learn more about this e-mail tool. |
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Step 7: Viewing student points
Click on the student points view to see the student names and points |
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Step 8: Pasting points to Excel
To copy points to the clipboard click on the clipboard icon in the toolbar, then click paste in your favorite spreadsheet program. |
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