Traditional Audience Response System (ARS) vs. Text Message-Based ARS in Medical Education–Part 1

Differences b/w Traditional and Text Message-Based ARS

“Is text-messaging a good audience response tool?” That’s a question that I am frequently asked both in client meetings and online.   The simple answer is “yes.” But the answer is more complicated and deserves a couple of blog posts. I created the following table to summarize the technologies:

Table 1:  Traditional ARS vs. Text Message-Based ARS

What’s the difference between traditional ARS and text message-based ARS?

Traditional ARS systems are hardware-based. You need to buy the system and the investment can be significant (Here’s a 30-keypad system for $795 and another 32-keypad system for $1280 with extra clickers offered for $35.74).

Even keypad rentals can be expensive. I’ve seen meeting sites renting keypads for $25 per pad per day. Multiply that by 1,000 attendees and things get expensive real fast.

In addition, you need to set up the hardware and software at each event which typically takes a few hours (and usually isn’t free…). Plus, there are regular maintenance and support costs.

Text messaging-based ARS use mobile phones. Each participant needs to have his or her own cellphone. They need good cellphone reception.

Audience members that have never used text messages will face a slight learning curve. And some audience members might see texting as an invasion of their privacy.

One limitation to texting that rarely gets discussed – there could be a slight delay in response if you’re sending 30,000 to 40,000 messages at once.

With proper planning and implementation, most of these limitations can be avoided, but I’ll save that for a future blog post.