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Transcript for Socrative and the Student Voice “My name is Orlagh McCabe, and I am a Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies and Sociology. Socrative is a Student Response System. It allows students to virtually respond to questions on their mobile devices, so either on a mobile phone or a laptop or an iPad, that kind of thing. Students can just go into the software, log an account, and as a teacher we are given a 'room number'. They put that room number in and they can engage with whatever activities you put forward. So, you can put forward things like quizzes, space race runs, you can do things like exit polls, or just general polls as well. I am not very technologically minded normally. This was introduced to me last year and it was really because I wanted to encourage peer learning, group dialogue and reflection within my sessions. It was shown to me by another colleague, and I thought 'I'll give it a go and see how it works' and I have just found it so useful in so many ways. We use it to reflect on topic materials. I use it for study skills. It has just become really embedded in much of the work that we do. For instance, this year I have used it for a diagnostic questionnaire with my students, which has enabled me to find out where they are up to in terms of the curriculum and the topics that we are looking at, whether they understand them, whether they have had any previous experiences in those areas, or they have previous knowledge within those areas. And that has been a really good opportunity for me then to develop course material based on their existing knowledge. I use it in terms of quizzes, so for example, one of my units has a class test coming up. Every week I have given the students a quiz based around the lecture and seminar materials. And most importantly, I use in terms of exit polls. What an exit poll does is it allows the students to reflect on the content of the session. It identifies whether they have understood what has been said, whether they have any areas that they are not sure about, and whether they can identify any areas that they might need further support with in the future. And I have found that to be really useful for a number of reasons. So, firstly, it allows me to identify knowledge gaps that exist for the student, so therefore I can reflect on action and immediately revisit that material and I find that to be invaluable in my teaching practice. Another positive aspect of Socrative is that students can choose to be anonymous. So you can ask them to put their name down as a colour, or just not put a name down at all. But if you do need to know who the student is for the purpose of identifying whether there are issues, you can also ask them to put their student number down, which will give you the opportunity maybe put forward some kind of an intervention, if needed, in the future. That can help when you have a large class. Importantly, obviously come September time we have a new cohort of students, and it sometimes takes a while for tutors to build a relationship with students and for students to feel confident in approaching the unit materials, or in dialogue or discussion within the lecture room or the classroom. I personally find that if I have a quieter cohort of students that Socrative can be an invaluable tool in generating discussion. I have had those moments where we say ask a question and there is complete silence for a good few minutes following that question. And I have actually reflected on action in a session a few weeks ago. We were looking at a session on gender and feminism and I asked a few questions to the group and there was complete silence. People weren’t willing to engage. And so, I thought 'quickly, I will create something really quickly on Socrative for a couple of questions and see if that promotes engagement'. And it did. It drastically turned the whole session around to the point that afterwards I had lots of feedback from students who said 'I am so pleased that you did that because it gave me the opportunity to say something’, ‘I was really concerned that what I was going to say wasn’t correct and I would CELT | Good Practice Exchange www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/good_practice

look silly in front of my peers' and that kind of thing. So, in those kind of ways it is completely fantastic and I found that as a direct consequence it has influenced the interaction of that group for the future. So, since that session has taken place, now the students, even when I don't use Socrative, are much more willing to engage and interact, and it has really promoted that inclusive classroom. I think that has been a really, really positive aspect.

As a tutor, one of the things that is great is that I know have a bank of quizzes and a bank of polls and a bank of questions on my Socrative account, that if I feel that a session maybe would benefit from. but hadn't thought about that in advance, you can reflect in action and use something to help promote the learning or engaged dialogue whilst you are in the teaching session. It is not just a case of leaving the room and thinking 'I should have done this' or 'I should have done that'. It is something you can think 'oh actually, while I am here, while I am doing this now, I can just log on quickly and do this'. I have found that to be really useful in terms of promoting collaborative learning and partnership learning.”

Student Thoughts Jo: “I like using Socrative. I am not always confidence in what I am saying in class is correct and sometimes I have got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick of something we have been discussing. So, I find it really useful that I, with Socrative, you can put an anonymous answer and then if it turns out you've got it completely wrong nobody can pinpoint that it was you that has said it. It just you the chance to see what everyone else is thinking and sometimes being able to understand an issue, having several peoples interpretation of that makes it a lot easier to work out what is being said.” Ashley: “I like Socrative because it offers a platform for people that don't feel like being too interactive in sessions, a bit shy maybe. It gets people involved and it fundamentally helps with learning then because I feel that being interactive in the sessions does get under the skin more with what you learn. So, it offers people who are perhaps a bit more shy of interacting in the sessions a platform to voice their own opinions.” Jacob: “What I like about Socrative is that a lot of the subject matter in the lectures we have is quite heavy, so it can break up a heavy lecture by Orlagh saying 'OK, let's do something different, You know, let's do a quiz on here'. And also, I am fairly confident with sharing my views but I know that some of my peers aren't. So, it allows them to kind of not have to hear my voice every two minutes.”