The following is a guest post from Fulton Tom and Bryan Breguet, Economics Department:
Many instructors are now using audience response systems such as iClicker or Top Hat to engage students in their classrooms. These user-friendly systems allow instructors to administer interactive activities such as quizzes and receive immediate student feedback. The caveat, however, is that they are far from being free. Both iClicker and Top Hat charge students a subscription fee. While the fee is not a big expense, it adds to the already rising cost of post-secondary educat
ion. Should we really expect students to pay tuition fees and buy textbooks and then to pay a subscription fee so that they can take the quizzes? We believe that more instructors should be aware of Socrative.
Socrative is similar to other audience response systems except that it comes as a completely free option. Once instructors have established an account at www.socrative.com and have chosen a name for their virtual classroom, they can set up and run quizzes. Socrative allows three question formats: multiple choice, true/false and short answer.
Students access Socrative using an Internet-enabled device (ie smartphone, laptop or tablet). They log in on the website or through a pre-installed app by entering the name of the virtual classroom chosen by the instructor and their name. Students do not set up a Socrative account and can participate in a quiz without providing personal information. They can also participate without being physically in class.
Instructors set the timing of activities by initiating and ending a session in Socrative. Each session can run for as long as the instructor wishes. The delivery of questions within a session can be teacher or student paced. Instructors can view student responses as soon as they are submitted and can get Excel reports of results once they have ended the session.
Socrative does have some limitations, however. Only one virtual classroom is attached to each instructor account and the classroom is capped at 50 students per session in the free version. Additionally, Socrative does not directly integrate with the class roster. In other words, the instructor would need to export the results and grades from the Excel file into a different gradebook.
These limitations can be bypassed by using Socrative PRO at a cost of US$49.99 per year for instructors. As with Socrative, there is no cost for students to use Socrative PRO.
Socrative is not perfect but can replace fee-based audience response systems for most instructors. If you are looking for an easy way to administer quizzes and to get direct feedback from your classroom, chances are Socrative is sufficient for your needs.
There are other free alternatives to iClicker such as InfuseLearning or CenterClass. But we can’t really help you with those since we haven’t been using these systems. Please contact Bryan Breguet (bbreguet@langara.ca) or Fulton Tom (ftom@langara.ca) if you have questions about Socrative.
Do you have a technology or tool that you would like to share with your colleagues? Write a blog post and send it to edtech@langara.ca!
