Evaluating Clickers and the Socrative App

CLICKERS An end of year survey indicated with one group of first degree students that 60% strongly agreed and 40% agreed with the use of clickers. Another group had 43% strongly agreed and 52% agreed with the use of clickers and 5% with no opinion. Comments in relation to clickers included -Encourages to not lose focus in lectures -Helps you learn from your mistakes -It provided a new and unique way of answering accounting questions -Kept the class involved within the lecture -Sometimes I think I know exactly what I'm doing then with the clickers questions I realise my mistakes and how to fix them as they're all explained. -More interesting than just basic day to day lectures. -Everybody works at the same pace and everyone sees the correct answer at the same time. SOCRATIVE The same group reported for Socrative a 40% agreement to use, 40% no opinion and 20% didn't support its use. An other group indicated, in relation to Socrative, 29% strongly in favour, 14% in favour, and only 10% not supporting. The positive feedback was in relation to style of feedback / working at own pace / having the question in front helped keep concentration / able to move at a slower/quicker pace / it was more descriptive and interactive than the clickers / led you through what you should be writing / it would tell you if you went wrong and the solution that would give you the right answer / really good as a guideline !! just wish I could use it at home. I liked that it went along each step with me The issues reported by the same group were, harder to function & use than the clickers / very difficult to concentrate on it in a classroom environment / Everybody was working at a different pace and the class ended up splitting into multiple groups of people working on different parts of the question / The feeling of being way behind the rest of the class / if I'm stuck on a Socrative app question it might take longer to get help from the lecturer whereas with the clickers questions the class all move at the same pace. My own view... The tool however is really dependant on how much effort you put in to providing the detailed feedback.