The following comes from Rebecca Glazier at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock:
It’s election season again and, as always, an exciting time to be teaching political science. This election year we have an addition tool to use in our efforts to get students actively engaged in learning about politics: a new app that tracks real time reactions to the presidential debates. React Labs: Educate was developed through collaboration between political scientists and computer scientists. It runs on smartphones and allows participants to register their moment-by-moment responses to what candidates are saying during a debate. Instructors who register their classes to participate will be provided with data showing which of your students used the app (handy for providing assignment credit or extra credit), presentation-ready figures of the data from each debate (to facilitate post-debate discussion), and additional educational resources. Not only will you be engaging your students in the debates, you will be helping the political scientists on this project–Amber Boydstun (University of California, Davis), Rebecca Glazier (University of Arkansas at Little Rock), and Matthew Pietryka (University of California, Davis)—collect data on debate responses. You can find out more about React Lab: Educate and register your classes at the project website: http://reactlabseducate.wordpress.com/.