by Hannah Gurr
How do we know if our learners are taking in what we have taught in class? Well, one way to find out is to ask them. CELFS has a number of mini-whiteboards, but if the technology is available to you and your students, why not try Socrative? Teachers will need computers with internet access and students will need smartphones or tablets, also with internet access.
This technique forms part of formative assessment: set quick, low-stakes quizzes, tests or questions, so you can find out where your learners are, and you are better informed about what to do next. Even better, the act of retrieving the information embeds it deeper in your students’ minds (Karpicke & Blunt 2011).
Less is more with this method of whole-class-response. Short quizzes can be prepared in advance, or you can ask a Quick Question on the fly. Alternatively, use the final 5 minutes of your class having students fill in an exit ticket. Click here for ‘exit slip’ ideas.
To get started, click on Get a FREE account here:
Then fill in a short form. Socrative associates a ‘room’ number with an email address. e.g. my email address was allocated the room number ‘553436’. You can change this in Settings.
Create a quiz by clicking on Manage Quizzes. Start by trying a quiz which is ‘Student Paced – Immediate Feedback’ and play around with the settings depending on whether you want to ‘Disable Student Names’ (if you don’t need to know who said what), ‘Randomize Question Order’ (helps prevent students cheating off each other) or ‘Randomize Answer Order’ (ditto).
Don’t forget to click START at the bottom, and FINISH at the end to get the report!
To show a ‘print version’ of the quiz, click Download and you can go through the answers as a class by displaying it on the IWB.
Students can download the app for free (Socrative Student: blue logo – the teacher version is orange). Students just have to enter your ‘room number’.
Click here to read Wodzinksi and Chang’s investigation of the perceived effectiveness of using Socrative to increase levels of student engagement (pp. 10-11).
References:
Karpicke, Jeffrey. D. and Blunt, Janell. R. (2011) ‘Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping’. Science. 11 February 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6018 pp. 772-775 [online] Available at: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6018/772.figures-only [Accessed: 04 November 2015]
Wodzinski, Tilo and Chang, Mei Leng (2015) ‘A preliminary study on perceived effectiveness of Socrative as a classroom response system (CRS) in foundation studies’. InForm. December 2015: Issue 15. pp10-11 [online] Available at: https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/inform/B14953_InForm_Issue_15_v13.pdf [Accessed: 05 February 2016]
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