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.

Quick Update

A number of times during the run-up to the end of year exams students asked if I had Socrative guides for some of the questions. After one tutorial they asked could they use at home. This actually highlighted a major weakness with the approach - you can only deliver one poll at a time!!!

A very sucessful tutorial

The Socrative app was a fantastic tool during a packed tutorial. Having prepared a long sequence of sub questions to guide students through a full exam standard question I was able to let a large number of students work at their own pace. They reported that the feedback on why they got the answer wrong was hugely helpful. I felt that a significant portion of the group worked really hard and managed to progress well through the tough question.

Evaluation of Clickers v Socrative

A quick evaluation of Clickers versus Socrative CLICKERS first Pros: Students really like using clickers Students are active and engage with the material Delivers within PowerPoint presentation Can create numeric input questions as well as text input and standard MCQ Students get feedback Students can benchmark against rest of the class Lecture gets feedback Software is easy to use within PowerPoint Cons: Messy to distribute at the start of every lecture Hard to time how long to allocate to each question Good students get bored while waiting for others to input answers Weaker students may not get enough time to work out their response SOCRATIVE Pros: Students can be presented with a serious of questions which they can work through at their own pace You can give detailed feedback if they select wrong answer They see everything on their mobile device lecturer does not have to distribute devices Cons: Connecting to WIFI Not every student has mobile device No numeric input question option (all though can work around by using Text Input) Students are tempted to use social media Students don't see where they are positioned with their peers DECISION POINT: Use clickers when presenting new material building clickers questions into PowerPoint presentation. Use Socrative as a tool to guide students through long exam style accounting questions which they can work through at their own pace getting feedback on the bits they don't know.

Every cloud has a silver lining...

Not a good start to February - keyboard on laptop has broken so I have had to abandon using clickers in my lectures until it is repaired. Needs to be sent back to Fujitsu so will take at least two weeks. However, students disappointment at no clickers has inspired me to try Socrative. The vast majority of my students indicated they had either mobile / tablet or laptop which they could get wifi access on. So after a day of trial and error I manage to build a lecture around using Socrative. My own feelings - I miss the integration with Powerpoint (specially the TurningPoint ribbon) but I can see a way of letting students work at their own pace. It was The students view - they missed the clickers, they felt they were too tempted to use the phones for social media as well as having difficulties with connecting to wifi. They missed the instant feedback of clickers. However I did overcome somewhat the following day by showing them the right versus wrong inputs. Decision point: Socrative was worth pursuing for my Mobile Learning Project instead of ThingLink.

New Semester Resolutions

I guess as semester two is about to begin I will make a resolution to move my Mobile Learning project on a little. Will start by re-evaluating the direction the project is taking.

ThingLink Frustrations

I tried come up with some more exercises using ThingLink in the lead up to the Christmas Exams. I found the interface more frustrating than last time and am considering the need to upgrade (costs money) or find an alternative tool. Will spend January evaluating options but - not feeling confidence that ThingLink will work.