Socrative: A Time-saving Formative Assessment Tool

🤔   What kind(s) of formative assessments (FA) do you have at school?

🤔   How do you usually keep track on students’ overall learning? 

🤔   Do you mark the papers manually and type the scores into an Excel?

🤔   Do you have difficulties in assessing students’ English proficiency in a 

       fun, interactive, efficient and effective way?

If you have got YES from one of the questions above, here we have💡 Socrative💡 !  

How Socrative Works?

Distinctively, Socrative is a FREE online formative assessment tools for English teachers to consolidate students’ knowledge and skills in particular vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension and self-reflection. It comprises face-to-face quizzes, quick polling, friendly group competition (i.e., Space Races) and immediate feedback (i.e., Exit Tickets). Moreover, it supports both Android and iOS systems which can be run in the computers, iPads, iPods and smart phones. If you want to further the features and functions of Socrative, you can download its comprehensive guide here.

(Source: YouTube )

Friendly reminder: Press FULL SCREEN before watching the clip 😉

Interesting Pedagogical Facts / Positive Comments of Socrative

1.     Feasible use in ESL/EFL classrooms:

¬  NO SPECIAL TRAINING is needed for English teachers and students.

¬  Both website and Apps distinguish users from STUDENT LOGIN and TEACHER LOGIN. Students need not create an account, but simply type in the Room Number.

2.     Higher learning motivation and classroom engagement:

¬  ALL students can complete the quizzes individually or collaboratively.

¬  Space Race (Figure 1) promotes collaborative learning: 

  The whole class can be divided into utmost 20 small groups. Students can acquire knowledge and/or consolidate English four skills by negotiating meaning, achieving consensus and reading the post-explanation of respective question.

¬  You can embed visual cues and prompt feedback (i.e., preset explanation of the correct answers) along with the quiz questions in advance (Figure 2).

(Figure 1 - Space Race)

(Figure 2 - Add visual cues on left top and type explanation for each question)

3.     Detailed classroom data

¬  You can keep a CLOSER track on students’ real-time learning progress by identifying their names, percentage of answers, total scores and the 3 pre-set formative assessments questions from the Exit Ticket. The 3 pre-set FA questions include:

        (1) MC - How well did you understand today’s material?;

        (2) Short questions - What did you learn in today’s class? ;

        (3) Any teacher’s questions.

¬  Students’ overall performance can be shown immediately on your tracking device. Meanwhile, both teachers and students can obtain a report for every quiz question in PDF format.

Limitations

1.   Scope of grading system: Socrative is a robotic tool which can only facilitates teachers in marking absolute answers, such as MC and True-False questions. It should be noted that you need to check every single short question carefully and discuss in class.

2.   Question diversity: As mentioned earlier, Socrative is designed for quick quizzes. In other words, if you want to keep a record of students’ writing skills and styles, Socrative may disappoint you for not providing long question or essay-type quizzes.

3.     Limited access of Socrative functions: Unless the school upgrades the tool to Socrative PRO, or else you can only conduct one private or public quiz room with 50 student capacity at a time.

4.   One tool cannot fit all: You cannot embed any audios along with the questions, implying Socrative may not be a wise option for listening or pronunciation-related activities. Meanwhile, to some extent students with auditory learning styles may not be catered effectively in the quizzes. To maximize the use of Socrative, perhaps you can choose Teacher Paced (i.e., teacher controls the flow of quiz questions and monitor students' responses) in addition to the use of Window Media Player  in the listening or pronunciation-related activities.

5.    Teachers’ presence: Despite having the room number, it seems that quizzes can only be launched when both teacher and students are online simultaneously. Perhaps Socrative can further develop the system by enabling teachers to accept students’ quiz request.

HEY! I hope YOU have gained some inspiration after BLOGGING my second post!

💭  What are your instant thoughts and feelings towards 💡 Socrative💡? 

Please feel free to 💬 / ✍  / 📧  below!

More updates will be available next week! Have an insightful Friday to all ELT teachers! 😄