Using Socrative to Enhance In-Class Student Engagement and Collaboration

International Journal on Integrating Technology in Education (IJITE) Vol.4, No.3,September 2015
DOI :10.5121/ijite.2015.4302 13
USING SOCRATIVE TO ENHANCE IN-CLASS
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND COLLABORATION
Sam M Dakka
Department of Engineering & Math, Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street,
Sheffield S1 1WB,United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Learning and teaching experiment was designed to incorporate SRS-Student Response System to measure
and assess student engagement in higher education for level 5 engineering students. The SRS system was
based on getting an immediate student feedback to short quizzes lasting 10 to 15 minutes using Socrative
software. The structure of the questions was a blend of true/false, multiple choice and short answer
questions. The experiment was conducted through semester 2 of yearlong engineering module. The
outcome of the experiment was analyzed quantitatively based on student performance and qualitatively
through student questionnaire. The results indicate that using student paced assessments method using
Socrative enhanced student’s performance. The results showed that 53% of the students improved their
performance while 23% neither improved nor underperformed. Qualitative data showed students felt
improvement in their learning experience. Overall results indicate positive impact using this technology in
teaching and learning for engineering modules in higher education
KEYWORDS
Socrative, Student engagement, Collaboration, SRS
1.INTRODUCTION
Traditional style lectures due to its passive monotonic one sided delivery rhythm have failed to
enthuse and engage students even though the topic might be of great interest. In fact studies
showed that the student focus and concentration is totalling meagrely 10 to 15 minutes of one
hour session (Bligh, 2000). In addition due to the large fluctuation of registered students each
academic year, (Biggs and Tang, 2007) dubbed the traditional lecture as a method of all seasons,
most likely due to the advantage by which it can accommodate large number of students. This had
prompted the search for more innovative techniques to enhance collaboration and active learning.
(Cavanagh, 2011) noted that collaborative learning and active learning raised the bar of interest,
stimulated and enriched the student knowledge and kept them attached to the topic under
discussion and leveraged their critical thinking skills. (Dewy, 1916) had made the statement “If
we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." interpretation of this
statement will lead to the conclusion that we should utilize the current tools available to their
disposal in order to stimulate and keep them engaged. Furthermore, (Dahlstrom, 2012), had
demonstrated that students advocate strongly for incorporating mobile technologies into their
learning environment and consider those tools an integral part of their success and professional
accomplishments as students are demanding seamless integration of those technologies. Given the
fact that the penetration of these technologies are well spread among student population over
variety of devices, such as laptops, smart phones, desktops and tablets, therefore, incorporating
mobile technology into learning and teaching might enhance collaborative teaching and enhance
active learning stimulating critical thinking skills. Due to the above, the judgement of binding

14
theory, research and practice is the best way to move forward to achieve the ultimate goal which
is stimulate and further enrich students’ knowledge through collaborative and active learning and
simulating industry environment.
2.USING STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEM-SOCRATIVE
An innovative approach was incorporated into the design and planning of teaching engineering
module sessions, Student Response system (SRS) as a part of the lecture. It has been
demonstrated that SRS and technology based systems can enhance student engagement (Terrion
and Aceti, 2012). SRS has been widely used in the past through devices called clickers which
demonstrated positive impact on student engagement (Blasco et al., 2012), were students can
give an immediate feedback to the lecturer questions, however clickers has initial cost associated
with it in addition it has limited functionality. This has led to search for a tool or software that
can be used through smartphones either through mobile connection or Wi-Fi internet connections.
The software is called Socrative, and the main advantage of this software lies in its versatility of
the type of questions that can be constructed and designed in addition to collaborative features
between different teams. The purpose of using Socrative is to assess whether the performance and
engagement of the students are enhanced as compared to traditional or other blended teaching and
learning lectures. Reflecting on design and planning of teaching session, using Socrative had
increased significantly the time of preparation for the session, since construction a large number
of variety of questions, such as multiple choice, short answer questions and true/false questions.
The element within Socrative that supports student learning and teaching is the fact that the
student can get immediate feedback and therefore might reflect further and develop critical
thinking approach to various engineering problems.
3.LEARNING AND TEACHING, ASSESSMENTS METHODS AND DESIGN OF
EXPERIMENTS BASED ON LEARNING THEORIES
During the progress of the module implementation of the constructive alignment theory (Biggs &
Tangs, 2007) which transformed my teaching to outcome based learning and teaching was
adopted. This is important as the emphasis is on how the student will use the teaching material
compared with what contents to incorporate into the module. Also, what learning activities should
be implemented to achieve those outcomes and how to assess those activities to measure whether
those are attained.
The constructive alignment theory emphasizes the intended learning outcomes of the lecture or
module rather what the lecturer is intended to deliver. This is normally written down in a
statement called Intended Learning outcomes (ILO’s) (Biggs and Tang, 2007) which articulates
what the learners will be able to accomplish and the level of accomplishment required (standard).
Therefore, reflecting on the delivery sessions based on the constructive alignment theory indicates
that one should further develop ideas on how to use Socrative in order to further assess the
performance and get the right feedback from the students. Using smartphones which are always
on devices (Kolb, 2011), enables immediate feedback and also assessing the students on real time,
the ultimate goal using Socrative is to assess how effective incorporating this new technologies in
enhancing the in-class and out-class collaboration and consequently the impact on performance
and critical thinking skill development. Collaborative learning defined (Prince, 2004) as learning
methodology that incorporates meaningful learning with learning engagement process or in other
words the students during the learning process reflect about what they are performing and
accomplishing, therefore this has an advantage in the sense that the students can control the
cognitive process development and also their accomplishments, this definitely a process that
stimulates and engage their critical skills which is essential when dealing with complex

15
engineering problems that require innovation and ingenuity. Socrative is a cloud based SRS,
versatile in the types of questions administered and the way of implementation can range from
individual to groups or teams. It provides immediate feedback for the student and academic,
therefore identification of gaps in knowledge and understanding can be addressed almost
instantly. (Awdeh et al., 2014) also has shown that students are more engaged and show
enthusiasm, so it is this coupled with advanced preparation from the academic that could lead to
better performance. Therefore advanced preparation is essential to the success of using this
innovative teaching methodology not only in the content but on how to utilize or incorporate the
technology effectively during the lecture session, and what approach to implement to get or
engage the student to achieve deep learning. Does the software really contribute to that effort of
deep learning? This question relates to how student learn, we can answer this question based on
teaching theories, two streams of teaching theories phenomenography and constructivism has
evolved with time, phenomengraphy (Sonnemann,1954) in the context of learning is based on the
student perspective of the learning material rather than what the lecture intended to teach. As
compared to constructivism is based on cognitive abilities (Piaget 1950), it implies that learners
build and construct knowledge based on their own experience and therefore lectures should be
active participatory with other peers including the lecturer. From the above argument related to
phenomenography we conclude that we should write down the intended learning outcome so that
the student know where they are going and what is the goal on the learning session and see how it
contributes to the main project or the topic under consideration. This will definitely transform
many students from surface learners (just to get passing grade and move on, or being surface
learners due to lack of time) to deep learners. The main challenge at this stage is how to answer
this question- how to transform the students to deep learners (Biggs, 1987, Biggs et al., 2001), in
general and in particular during session using Socrative. It is worth noting that both theories
advocate for learning that promotes conceptual change, not the acquisition of information is the
main theme but what we will do with this information. The drive for conceptual change (Biggs
and Tang, 2007) can happen if we answer the following questions: (1) Writing down the intended
outcomes so student have a clear direction where we are going (2) What is the need to go that
path (motivation prerequisite) (3) Students have free ability to concentrate on the task freely (4)
collaboration between students, peers and lecturer is essential to develop deep learning. Based on
the above 4 questions, drive the transformation from passive to active learners. Elaboration and
focus on implementation Socrative in the context of these questions is crucial. In order to answer
question 1 we must adhere to strict procedure of writing down a list of verbs from high to low
cognitive levels, for example at the top level should be “theorizing” and at the bottom
“memorizing” and in between varied levels of cognitive abilities. In deep learning students
implement all desired activities both at low and high level but on surface learning they mainly
focus on the low level ones, therefore the main task is to try to identify surface learning and make
required adjustment to prevent it from happen. Careful examinations of those questions, questions
2 and 3 in the context of the module delivered are clear for the specific subject under
consideration as they can identify the progression path on this topic and what is the motivation
behind it in addition to further enhancement by a video clip presentation. Furthermore, the
students are free to focus on any problems they are encountering. It is question 1 and 4 which are
critical for transforming the students into deep learners using Socrative that will be addressed.
The quizzes constructed, incorporated as discussed above high and low cognitive verbs that
support deep and surface learning, some low level questions require memorizing while others are
definitely support deep learning such as verbs related to principles. The questions constructed are
supporting variety of levels within the context of deep and surface learning were implemented, it
is worth emphasizing question number four with regards to collaboration with peers is planned in
the future and will be the subject of future publication.

16
4.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Student Performance
Student paced assessments using Socrative was performed for 10 consecutive weeks at semester
2, the entire academic semester for module A. Each assessment lasted between 10 to 15 minutes
and was conducted at the same time of the day and at the same day of the week in order to reduce
variability associated with human factors that can affect student’s performance. The module
performance (final grade) of semester two was compared to semester one for each student in
order to identify whether using Socrative student paced assessments during semester 2 has
improved student performance. Figure 1 illustrates the final grade for each student for semester 1
and 2. The magenta and the blue bars show the student score for semester 1 and 2 respectively.
The results of figure 1 demonstrates some improvement in the student performance, in order to
further corroborate this observation the data from figure1 was further analysed to account for
overall student improvement versus no improvement and less improvement for semester 2 as
compared to semester 1, this is illustrated in Figure 2. Inspection of figure 2 reveals that there is
53% improvement in the nominal overall grade performance of the students (first bar, adjacent to
vertical axis). Grading both semesters was performed based on the same assessment criteria. The
second bar on figure 2 illustrates, under the assumption grading results are within +/-3% precision
margin of accuracy, that not only 53% performed better but also significant under performance is
just 20%. In overall, Socrative data suggests student paced assessments did improve overall
student performance understanding and enhanced student engagement.
Figure 1. Semester 1 & 2 bars respectively for each student number
Figure 2. Student performance comparison

17
4.2.Student Survey
A student questionnaire was constructed similar to (Awdeh et al., 2014) and posted for students to
assess and get feedback on incorporating Socrative in the lecture. It is worth emphasizing that
Socrative student paced assessment was conducted during this teaching and learning experiment
were the student answered the quizzes privately, to that end there was no any collaboration during
the actual experiment with their peers. Despite this lack of live collaboration, table 1 illustrates,
there are positive responses and students are embracing and advocate incorporating this
technology into their learning and teaching environment. The feedback from the students
indicates positively, that the students felt that they are actively collaborating in their learning
experience, have the freedom to participate in their learning experience, improved their
understanding of material, improved their learning experience, and enhanced the exchange of the
information with the lecturer. Answers to questions listed under the question column
corresponding to cell number 3,4,7 &8 while did not get the passing mark, this was expected as
the design of this learning experiment was not based on collaboration with their peers during the
active session.
Table1. Student survey scores based on 100% scale
Questions/students/average A B C D E F G H Av
I felt that I actively collaborated
in my learning experience
50 75 75 75 75 75 75 25 66
I felt I have the freedom to
participate in my own learning
experience
50 50 75 75 75 75 100 50 69
In this Method, my classmates
and faculty interactions made me
feel valuable.
50 50 50 50 0 50 75 25 44
This method has favored my
personal relationships with my
classmates and lecturer
25 25 50 50 25 50 50 25 38
Socrative can improve my
comprehension of the concepts
studied in class
25 25 75 75 75 75 75 75 63
The method can lead to a better
learning experience
25 75 75 100 75 100 75 75 75
Using Socrative gave me the
opportunity to have more
discussions with classmates
25 50 75 50 0 75 75 25 47
Using Socartive allowed the
exchange of information with
classmates
50 50 75 25 0 50 75 25 44
Using Socartive gave me the
opportunity of more discussions
with the lecturer.
50 50 75 75 0 75 75 25 53
Using Socrative allowed the
exchange of information with the
lecturer.
25 50 100 50 100 50 100 25 63

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The score scale is based on the following respond of the students, strongly agree, agree, neutral,
disagree and strongly disagree which granted the marks of 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 0%
respectively entered in the student survey shown above.
5.CONCLUSION
Learning and teaching experiment was designed to incorporate student response system to
measure and assess student engagement in higher education for level 5 engineering students. The
SRS system was based on getting an immediate student feedback to short quizzes lasting 10 to 15
minutes using Socrative software. The structure of the questions was a blend of true/false,
multiple choice and short answer questions. The experiment was conducted through semester 2 of
yearlong module. The outcome of the experiment was analyzed quantitatively by comparing the
overall performance of the students on semester 2 as compared to 1 and qualitatively through
student questionnaire. The results indicate that using this method (student paced assessments
using Socrative) despite the lack of collaboration aspects designed into the experiment did
enhance the performance of the students on semester 2 as compared to semester 1. The results
showed that 53% of the students improved their performance while 23% neither improved nor
underperformed as compared to semester 1. So a total 76% improvement. Qualitative data based
on the student questionnaire showed that the student felt that this method improved their learning
experience, actively collaborated and have the freedom to participate in their learning experience
and allowed the exchange of information with the lecturer. The method of team work, student
paced or lecturer paced was not implemented in the teaching experiment yet, therefore the student
expressed less positive responses to the elements of interaction, relationship and exchanging
information with their class mates which was expected and will be the subject of future research
and publication. Future work will be focused on building upon team work configuration within
Socrative in the context of addressing all the elements of deep learning transformation discussed.
Overall the results indicate positive impact of using this technology in teaching and learning for
engineering modules in higher education.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank students on the engineering module who participated in this
teaching and learning experiment.
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