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Clickers and the TurningPoint Software

TurningPoint Software and Keepad "Clickers" for Audience Interaction

Hand-held audience response devices, commonly known as "clickers", enable a lecturer or presenter to engage their audience in a more interactive presentation by gathering and displaying audience responses to questions during the session.  UniSA has adopted the TurningPoint software from Turning Technologies and Keepad RF clickers from Keepad Interactive as the preferred technology for doing this.

TurningPoint logo    Keepad receiver   Keepad clicker   

TurningPoint integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint and allows you to communicate with your audience interactively by asking them multiple choice questions to which they can reply by selecting 0 to 9 (or A to J) on a hand-held wireless Keepad.  The software reads the responses via a receiver on the on the presenter's PC, writes them to a data file and, in one mouse click, summarises the responses on the PowerPoint slide as a chart. 

As well as using the immediate feedback of the response charts to engage the audience and modify the presentation the presenter can also save the data file for later analysis. TurningPoint can help you to adapt your presentation, lesson or lecture according to the answers received, helping you to understand your audience better and improve productivity and results.

While it is possible to assign specific receivers to individual members of the audience responses are more typically gathered and recorded anonymously to promote less inhibited and more "honest" responses.

Where to Access Clickers at UniSA

All shared lecture theatre and tutorial room PCs have the TurningPoint 2008 software and each campus has at least one set of 50 Keepad clickers with a receiver licensed for that version of the software.  Note that TurningPoint 2008 is the current UniSA-approved version of the software and the receivers will work with this version only. 

The main metropolitan campuses have at least 4 sets of clickers for loan and from 24 November 2008 these will be available for use in any teaching space on the campus and bookable via Campus Central.  Note the clickers are no longer stored in the main lecture theatre on each campus and instead can be collected from the Campus Central Office.

Campus Number
of sets		 Clickers
per set		 Receivers
per set		 Location
(from 24/12/2008)		 Booking For use in
City East 4 50 1 City East
Campus Central		 Campus Services
8302 2261 or email		 on campus
1 82 1
City West 4 50 1 City West
Campus Central		 Campus Services
8302 0555 or email		 on campus
Magill 4 50 1 Magill
Campus Central		 Campus Services
8302 4055 or email		 on campus
Mawson
Lakes		 4 50 1 Mawson Lakes
Campus Central		 Campus Services
8302 5055 or email		 on campus
CRE
Whyalla		 1 50 1 Whyalla
Campus Central		 Campus Services
8302 6161		 on campus
CRE
Mt Gambier		 1 50 1 UniSA Office via Cathy Hughes on campus

The Campus Central loan clickers must be booked ahead of time and picked up and returned (complete with the receiver) to Campus Central within 15 minutes of the start and end of the class. 

As well as the shared clickers some schools and divisions (Division of Business, Division of Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences) have purchased additional receivers and clickers for use by their staff.  Note that the Health Sciences Division clickers are also loaned out from the City East Campus Central office.

Steps to Using TurningPoint and the Clickers

The following steps outline how the lecturer/presenter can use the TurningPoint and PowerPoint software and the Keepad clickers and receivers to prepare, run and analyse a TurningPoint session:

Preparing a presentation

  1. The presenter uses their own PC with MS PowerPoint (preferably PowerPoint 2007 with Service Pack 1) and TurningPoint 2008 to prepare a PowerPoint presentation
    • TurningPoint provides an easy-to-use selection of multi-choice question formats and response chart formats and embeds them in the presentation as PowerPoint slides
    • Typically a small number of TurningPoint response slides would be interspersed with "normal" information slides
    • You can choose the style and layout of the questions, audience prompts and response summary charts for each slide

Running a TurningPoint session

  1. The presenter uses a presentation PC (usually a notebook PC or a lecture theatre or tutorial room PC) with PowerPoint 2007 (SP1) and TurningPoint 2008 to run the presentation.
    • Plug in a licensed Responsive Innovations RF receiver into the USB port and start up TurningPoint (which will automatically start PowerPoint with the TurningPoint tool bars)
    • Distribute a Keepad clicker to each member of the audience and runs the presentation
    • As each response slide is reached open the slide for responses (one mouse click or keypad press)
    • A second click or key press to close the responses and summarise the results in a chart on the same slide
  2. At the end of the presentation
    • Save the data file to own flash drive for later analysis of responses
    • Remove the receiver from the PC and retrieve the clickers from the audience
    • Store both in the carry case(s) and return them to secure cabinet or Campus Central

Reporting and analysis

  1. The presenter uses a PC with the PowerPoint (preferably PP2007) and TurningPoint (preferably TP2008) to prepare a PowerPoint presentation
    • TurningPoint provides an easy-to-use selection of multi-choice question formats and response chart formats and embeds them in the presentation as PowerPoint slides

Licence Conditions

TurningPoint 2008 can be installed on any UniSA computer for the purpose of preparing or running presentations for use with UniSA's licensed Keepad clickers and receivers.  The licences required for running the presentations have been purchased with each of the Keepad clickers and the licence codes have been activated on the receivers.  There is no need to purchase additional licences for this purpose or to register individual copies of the software provided that the software is used only for preparation and presentation in conjunction with UniSA's licensed Keepad hardware. 

Correct Software Versions for UniSA - Important

The current supported version of TurningPoint in UniSA is TurningPoint 2008 and the recommended version of MS PowerPoint is PowerPoint 2007.

For running a TurningPoint session it is essential that the version of the receiver's licence matches the version of the software on the presentation PCs.  A receiver must not be plugged in to a PC with a mis-matched version of the software installed since this can wipe the receiver's licence code.  UniSA's receivers are currently configured with TurningPoint 2008 licence codes and this version of the software is installed on all lecture theatre and tutorial room PCs.

If your PC has an earlier version of the software uninstall it before installing TurningPoint 2008.

How to Get the TurningPoint Software

Simple installation and quick start instructions are available in the TurningPoint 2008 Quick Start Guide

UniSA staff and their IT support staff can download the TurningPoint 2008 software from:

More Information

Additional information can be found at

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