Using Socrative.com
During these unprecedented times all educators are looking at new ways to engage their students during live webinars. This article is about a well know quiz platform called Socrative.
I have used this platform earlier to engage freshers in face to face classes as icebreakers. Generally I would ask questions about background knowledge related to the subject I teach, to from where they come from. Moving with Socrative to online delivery was a seamless experience.
To use Socrative you need to initially setup a Teacher account. After that you are good to go even without setting up any Quizes. Students connect to you through a Room that you need to define.
The Quick Question Multiple Choice is my favourite to quickly ask anything impromptu. Basically you need to list down on a white board or on your slide up to 5 options and get students to select their choice.
You can project the result screen, and I never get tired of the excitement the students experiencing a live poll. You can see the graph change real time as the students select their option.
The students need to login one time as a Student and type in the Room that the Teacher is using. There is no registration required. Typically students use their mobile phones.
Students automatically navigate to the next set of quizzes the teacher launches.
You can easily setup Quizes before your lectures using the Quiz option as a Teacher.
A typical Quiz that I use when I meet students for the first time. These quizzes can be launched using the Launch Quiz option.
You can change the behaviour of how the students experience the quizzes through the Delivery Methods and Settings.
If you want to control when students should see the questions in your Quiz (one that has multiple questions) you should select Teacher Paced. The Instant Feedback and Open Navigation allows students to go through the entire quiz by themselves.
Socrative is meant for synchronous mode of lectures which are typically Face to Face or live Webinars. Students enjoy the interaction and the break they get from quizzes. This helps teachers to keep the students engaged during the synchronous mode delivery.
The Socrative team has made the user experience the students get in using the website very rewarding. The only downside that I have had in using Socrative is its limitation of 150 students. Socrative is my preferred platform for class interaction with less than 150 students.
This article appears as a Blog Post in the SLIIT eLearning Research Group Blog by the author.
