A guide to Socrative

What is socrative?

To get an idea about Socrative and what it can be used for, please watch the short introduction video below (there are some small visual changes but the content is the same):

Creating an account

Please remember that only teachers need to sign up for Socrative, students only require a link and a class code to access the quizzes. To sign up, go to www.socrative.com and click Sign up for free (1). To log-in in future, just click Teacher Login (2)

On the next page, click SIGN UP on the Free section

Fill out the form with all your details (1), then click Next(2)

Complete the demographic information (1), tick the box to agree to the conditions (2) and click Next (3)

Click the box for Socrative Free (1) and click Finish (2)

And that’s it, you’re registered. You should see a welcome box with a link to the User Guide if you want to go through that. One thing to note is the Room number at the top of the page (1). This is the number you give to students to access any quiz you are running. This may be your name.

Creating quizzes

To get started creating quizzes, click on Quizzes in the top row.

Then click Add Quiz (1) and Create New (2).

Give your quiz a name (1) (eg, linkers quiz, past tenses quiz) and then choose one of the three options for question types to start creating (2). Note that within the same quiz you can have questions of different types (short answer, T/F, multiple choice), so your choice here only determines the first type of question that you are going to create. If you want to share your quiz with colleagues, ensure the slider button for sharing (3) is activated.

Multiple Choice Questions

Here is an example of creating a multiple choice question.

1. 1. Is where you write the name of the quiz
   2. Is where you write your question, it can be a gap fill, a sentence stem or just a question
   3. Is where you put the options for the answers.
   4. If you don’t need all 4 options you can delete them
   5. Is where you indicate the correct answer. NOTE: you can have more than one correct answer, so if you want students to select 2 or even 3 correct answers, they can, just make sure you tick them here.
   6. If you need more than 5 options, you can add more here.
   7. Is where you can put an explanation for the correct answer, this will pop up after the students have answered.
   8. Is where you can add an image from your computer
   9. Make sure this is enabled if you want to share your quiz with colleagues
   10. Use Save and Exit to save and close the quiz and go back to your list of quizzes.
   11. Is where you can delete the question with the bin icon, or save the question with the blue tick – this shows your list of questions and gives more options to move the question up and down in the question order or duplicate the question (for example if you are creating another question with very similar wording, this is a useful option to have)

Or to add a question to this quiz, choose a question type with Add a Question at the bottom:

T/F Questions

Here is an example of a T/F question. Many of the features are the same as the multiple choice questions, just note that in the box (1) you write your T/F statement and remember to select the correct answer (2) (highlighted green for true, red for false). Use the Explanation area (3) to justify your answer. Again, click Save and Exit to go back to your quiz list, the blue tick to save the question, or add another question type from the bottom.

Short Answer Questions

Here’s an example of a short answer question. Again, many options are the same, you put the question in (1). However – and this is a key point – if you want Socrative to automatically answer the question, you need to put the answer(s) in the options box (2). Note that the students have to write exactly the correct answer (so in the example below, if they write ‘America’, they won’t get a correct answer. It is NOT case sensitive, so students could use capital letters and it would still be correct.

Use Add Answer and the “X” symbols to delete options (3) and the Explanation area (4) to justify your answer, and the blue tick to save (5) and close the question.

Saving a quiz

As we mentioned, next to each question is a blue tick “Save” button. You can press this as you are creating your quiz to save the individual questions and go to edit other questions within the same quiz. To edit a question, click the pencil icon next to the question you want to edit:

Important: Remember to click Save and Exit at the top to save all the changes to your quiz. You don’t have to finish creating a quiz in one sitting, you can go back and add more questions later or edit existing questions on the quiz as explained below.

Editing a quiz

To edit a quiz you’ve already made or to add more questions to an unfinished quiz, click on Quizzes (1) in the top left

Click the name of the quiz you wish to edit (1). Alternatively, click the document symbol (2) to duplicate the quiz. Click the download arrow (3) to download the quiz as a spreadsheet and the share symbol (4) to share the quiz with colleagues

Once you’ve edited the quiz, remember to Save and Exit when you finish.

Starting a quiz (this is very, very important)

Ok, this is the really important bit. Many teachers get caught out by what you have to do to start a quiz so that students can access it. The temptation is to assume that students can access your quiz if you have given them your room number. This is NOT true. For students to access a quiz, you first need to start the quiz through your Socrative account. The reason is that you might have multiple quizzes created, but you can run only one at a time for students to access. So, if you plan for students to do a quiz in class or do it for homework, you have to do the following:

Click on Launch (1) in the top left and then click Quiz (2).

Select the quiz from the list that you want to start (1). Then click Next (2)

Choose from the three choices about the type of quiz you want the students to do on the left:

1. Instant feedback. You can find out more on this and the other options by clicking on the information symbol. Basically, students can work through these at their own pace, but with each question they have to submit first and get correct/incorrect response before they can move onto the next question. You are able to monitor their progress via a live results table.
2. Open Navigation. Students have the ability to edit questions, skip questions and navigate the quiz their own way. Once they’ve completed the activity they can submit the entire assessment. You are able to monitor their progress via a live results table.
3. Teacher Paced. Teachers control the flow of questions. You send one question at a time, and visualize the responses as they happen. You can skip and revisit questions.
4. Depending on the option you choose, various sub-options will appear on the right for you to choose from.
5. Click Start to launch the quiz.

NOTE: one key thing to remember is that any quiz you start will keep running until you stop it through the Socrative dashboard. It will even keep running if you close the browser, shut down the computer etc. So, you can set quizzes for homework, as long as you remember to a) start the quiz and b) NOT stop it until they have all finished.

how students can access the quiz

It’s very easy for students to access your quiz after you started it. On their mobile devices or on a computer they need to go to the link below:

www.socrative.com

This will send them to the following page where they should click “Login”:

They should then choose Student Login.

Enter your room number (1) and click Join (2)

They will then be asked to add their name (1) and then click Done (2)

They should then be able to access the quiz questions and submit answers.

Monitoring a quiz

While a quiz is going on, a teacher can monitor progress from their Socrative account and see students progress and how many they have got right. Click on Results (1) and you can see the progress of your current quiz.

Click the slider buttons to see students’ names and their progress (1). Just be careful about showing this in class if you are doing it there as students who haven’t finished can see some of the answers! You can click on the dropdown menu (2) to shift between progress, percentage correct and number of questions correct as view. You can also click on individual question numbers (3) to see specific data about that question.

Downloading reports

Click on Reports in the top menu.

Choose the quiz you want to generate a report for from the list.

Use the slider buttons (1) to choose the information you want to include and the dropdown menu (2) to choose the focus, then click Reports (3)

Use the options on the left (1) to choose the output type and the options at the bottom (2) to choose how you will receive it.

Sharing a quiz with another teacher

It is possible to quickly and easily share your quizzes with another teacher so they can import them into their account and use them with their own students (they, of course, will need a Socrative account).

To do this go into a quiz as if you are going to edit it (see above). Look in the top right hand corner and make sure the sharing slider is on – it should be green. Then take the code – in this case SOC-24515197 – but each quiz will have its own unique one and share it with your colleague(s).

For them (or you) to import it into their own account, they should go to QUIZZES, then Add Quiz (1) and click Import (2).

They then add the code (beginning SOC) to the box (1) and click Import Quiz (2). The quiz should now be in their own list of quizzes and they can edit and change it as much as they want without it changing yours.