Create a competition in the classroom

Desktop or portable computer, mobile devices, projector, Internet connection

In this activity you will learn how to create a competition for learner teams based on quiz answers using Socrative.

It is very important to be able to visualize learner understanding. This activity is useful for building assessments and seeing results in real-time. From the learner point of view this is also an engaging way to learn.

• to create an assessment quiz
• to create a competition by delivering the quiz to learners
• to analyse the results
• to interpret and evaluate the results

Socrative is a tool for fun, effective classroom engagement. It allows the educator to instantly connect with learners as learning happens and assess them with prepared activities or on-the-fly questions to get immediate insight into their understanding.

Socrative is available online at https://www.socrative.com/

Alternative tools to create competitions are:

• Kahoot (https://kahoot.com/)
• Quizzlet (https://quizlet.com)

This activity allows you to define a quiz, launch a competition for learner teams in the classroom based on that quiz, monitor the answers in real-time and get a report of results at the end.

At the beginning a planning step is needed to design the quiz, which means choosing the topic, the question typology and defining questions and answers. In this planning phase you also need to define the target group and the number of learner teams.

At the same time you need to get familiar with the Socrative tool to create quizzes and competitions. You can use the online help on the tool web site or a YouTube tutorial (e. g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upY8uG3NFfY, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyycybD8KNw).

In order to be able to use the tool, firstly you have to create a free account as educator at “https://b.socrative.com/login/teacher/#register/info” and secondly to sign in (https://b.socrative.com/login/teacher/).

Now you are ready to create a quiz: select “quizzes” from the top menu, and then click the “add quiz” button and “Create New”; then follow the instructions to add questions: for each question select the typology (multiple choice, true or false and short answers) and insert contents; at the end “save and exit”.

You have now completed the first part of the activity (quiz creation); you are ready to launch the quiz as a completion in the classroom.

Back to the main menu, select the “launch” item and then activate the “space race” button.

Choose the quiz you have just created and adjust settings: number of teams, shuffle options, etc.

Then start the race, share the unique code to allow learners to join your room by logging at https://b.socrative.com/login/student/ to answer the questions.

Click “finish” to close the competition when all the participants have finished the activity and click on “View Chart” to visualize results.

• plan the activity, by defining the quiz and the target group
• get familiar with the tool
• create a free account for educator in Socrative (https://b.socrative.com/login/teacher/#register/info) if not done yet
• sign in (https://b.socrative.com/login/teacher/)
• create a quiz
• launch “Space Race” by choosing the quiz and the race setting
• ask learners to enter into your public room and answer the questions visualize results

This activity requires at least two distinct phases: the first one is the creation of the quiz (creation phase) and the second one is the competition delivery (launching phase) that takes place in the classroom during a face-to-face lesson.

It can be useful for you as educator to create a library of quizzes that can be used later in a race.

Before the real competition, in order to verify that everything works well, once you have launched the race, it is convenient to simulate at least two dummy learners joining your room (https://b.socrative.com/login/student/) from other devices in such a way that you can get familiar with monitoring the progresses in real time.

To be able to use the Socrative services educators need to get an account or connect with their Google account.

StuLearners can use the service only if they are at least 13 years old, or if they are under this age, with the consent of the educator or a legal parent, according to the COPPA Privacy Policy (https://www.masteryconnect.com/socrative/COPPA-policy.html).

For more information read “Terms & Conditions of Service“ (https://www.socrative.com/terms.html).