Audience Response Software Review

09/18/2005 06:49 PM

My company, Molecular Media is getting into the audience response technology niche for live production. One of our major clients has been using the Classroom Performance System for a couple of years. They own the systems and we’ve been running it for them.

Lately, they (and we) have been disappointed with CPS’s hardware performance – the kit our client owns is infra-red, and as such is line-of-sight. Also, none of us have been happy with the visual integration of this software into PowerPoint. To be fair, eInstruction offers RF-based keypads now, but their software is predominately designed for classroom use and leaves a lot to be desired in the visual layout department. Think white screen with black text, and you’ve got the idea. Trying to make that look good alongside professionally designed PowerPoint templates is an exercise in futility.

Since this client does so much audience response (ARS), we’ve decided to suggest a system for them. My task was to review the software from the four vendors we decided to get bids from.

The major vendors are (alphabetically):

Five of the ARS software providers are VARs(Value Added Resellers) for Fleetwood’s Reply Systems keypads. eInstruction uses their own hardware. eInstruction also maintains a Macintosh version of their software, although it doesn’t seem to keep feature-parity with its’ Windows counterpart, and if you want to use the database files between OSes, you must juggle exports and imports on both sides.

I did not review Resolver’s product, Resolver*Ballot, as its’ feature-set didn’t match our needs. It is primarily for public voting, and as such, didn’t seem suited to quick polling and game-show use.

So, without further ado, here’s the line-item review of each software package.

CPS
  • Standalone software. Visual integration with PowerPoint is poor.
  • Many types of polling questions.
  • Graphing style is not embedded into questions – it is a pop-up window.
  • Question and Answer properties are chosen with templates.
  • Poll can be timed, or manual
  • Number of responders and which pad has responded are both displayable during a poll
  • Poll data is embedded into CPS database
  • Reporting is done within the program, against the database. Many reports exist. Question and answer text are presented in the reports.

Grades

PowerPoint Visual Integration 1.0
Ease of Use 8.0
Reporting 10
Software Stability1 6.0
Hardware Stability2 3.0
Overall 5.6

1 Some database versioning issues

2 Hardware tested was infra-red and thus line-of-sight

ARS Technologies PowerPoll
  • PowerPoint Plug-In, question and answer text are PowerPoint
  • One type of polling question – multiple choice with correct answer
  • Very limited graphing style, limited to bar graphs with vertical orientation
  • Markup based properties palette (not intuitive GUI), must be selected for each question via the “Control Toolbox” palette, and selecting the PowerPoll control via a list which is 230 items long. Really.
  • Each poll object contains a timer. Which must be used, but can be escaped prematurely during polling.
  • Facility for seeing number of responses during polling doesn’t appear to exist.
  • Poll data embedded in slide
  • Reporting is a “harvester” which is run outside of PowerPoint, and reads the embedded data within the PowerPoint files, exporting to a comma delimited file. The only data which is exported is a Question Name and the response answer number for each pad. Linking the actual question and answer text is not possible, except when done manually and after-the-fact.

(They have a more featured product called WinQuiry, but don’t license it to producers – they only rent it out with their systems)

Grades
PowerPoint Visual Integration3 7.0
Ease of Use 5.0
Reporting 1.0
Software Stability4 5.0
Hardware Stability5 10
Overall 5.6

3 Graphing choices are limited.

4 Unknown stability score – long-term production data couldn’t be generated for this review.

5 The Reply Systems RF hardware is known to be very stable.

ComTec Synthesis XPr
  • Standalone software. Visual integration to PowerPoint is good.
  • Many types of polling questions
  • Graphing style is presented on a results screen for each polling screen
  • Question and Answer properties are edited graphically, side by side. Templates are available.
  • Poll can be timed or manual.
  • Number of responders and which pads have not responded can be displayed during a poll
  • Poll data is saved to the presentation file
  • Reporting is done within the program, from the presentation file. Three reports exist. Question and answer text can be presented within some reports, but not exported data. For making reports which utilize exported data, one must export the polling questions and the data separately and join them with “Microsoft Office Tools” (which probably means making a specialized Excel spreadsheet to join the two files)

ComTec Unity XPr
  • Standalone software. Visual integration with PowerPoint is good.
  • Some types of polling questions
  • Graphing style is presented on a results screen for each polling screen
  • Question and Answer properties are edited graphically, side by side. Templates are available.
  • Poll can be timed or manual.
  • Number of responders and which pads have not responded can be displayed during a poll
  • Poll data is saved to the presentation file
  • Reporting is done within the program, from the presentation file. Three reports exist. Question and answer text can be presented within some reports, but not exported data. For making reports which utilize exported data, one must export the polling questions and the data separately and join them with “Microsoft Office Tools” (which probably means making a specialized Excel spreadsheet to join the two files)

Grades6
PowerPoint Visual Integration 9.0
Ease of Use 8.0
Reporting 4.0
Software Stability7 9.0
Hardware Stability8 10
Overall 8.0

6 While ComTec offers two tools, the grades I give are the same for both because the software is nearly identical. Unity is built toward group decisions with ranking and Synthesis is mainly for Learning Support, because it keeps track of scoring.

7 We’ve used this software in the past, and it has been stable.

8 The Reply Systems RF hardware is known to be very stable.

Meridia ConnectPro
  • Standalone software. Visual integration with PowerPoint is acceptable.
  • One type of question – multiple choice.
  • Graphing is presented beneath answers on the layout (picture a bar graph with the answer text overlayed on top of the bars)
  • Question and Answer properties are edited on a edit screen. Font and color choices are global to presentation.
  • Poll can be timed or manual.
  • Number of responders can be displayed during a poll
  • Poll data is saved within the polling file.
  • Reporting is done by exporting the polling data. Two output options are given: HTML and CSV. The HTML versions are passable, and the CSV files appear to be easily made into human-readable Excel docs.

Grades
PowerPoint Visual Integration 6.0
Ease of Use 4.0
Reporting 2.0
Software Stability9 4.0
Hardware Stability10 10
Overall 5.2

9 Unknown software stability, but product is Visual Basic.

10 The Reply Systems RF hardware is known to be very stable.

Option Technologies OptionPower
  • PowerPoint Add-In, thus visual integration with Powerpoint is perfect
  • Many types of templated questions.
  • Graphing style is endlessly variable, as the graphs are PowerPoint data objects.
  • Question and Answer properties are PowerPoint based, and are endlessly variable. Questions can be converted from simple PowerPoint slides which contain just a Title and a Bulleted List
  • Each question can be timed, or manual
  • Number of responders can be displayed during a poll, and polls can be stopped once a threshold (percentage) is reached.
  • Poll data is saved within an external database (MS SQL Server)
  • Reporting is done by using a Report Wizard. Several reporting options are given. All export to formatted Excel. Since data is being stored in a MS SQL Server database, extremely complex reporting could be done on the raw data.

Grades
PowerPoint Visual Integration 10
Ease of Use 10
Reporting 9.0
Software Stability11 5.0
Hardware Stability12 10
Overall 8.8

11 Unknown stability score – long-term production data couldn’t be generated for this review.

12 The Reply Systems RF hardware is known to be very stable.

THE WINNER

Option Technologies OptionPower

THE RUNNER UP

ComTec Unity/Synthesis

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

eInstruction CPS
Reservations:
1) Don’t get the IR system
2) Don’t expect great visual integration with Powerpoint.

NOT RECOMMENDED

ARS Technologies PowerPoll
Meridia ConnectPro

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