An App to Get Students to Class
The purpose of this teaching practice was to determine if Socrative, a free app for assessing student learning, for in-class quizzing over the reading material would improve student attendance in an RN to BSN research course.
Rationale/Background
RN to BSN students have busy lives that often interfere with getting to class. In a recent Professional Nursing course of 24 RN to BSN students over 9 weeks there were 39 tardies or absences, an average of 4.33 per week. This is despite giving one point of extra credit each week for being on time.
Best Practice
Instead of quizzing students over reading material on a student learning platform such as Blackboard prior to class, students were given an in-class quiz at the beginning of each class session using the Socrative app. Students were oriented to Socrative the first day of class, and a practice test was given. They were also given a choice of using the Socrative app or taking a pen and pencil scantron quiz. This teaching strategy had built-in flexibility for students. The two lowest quiz scores could be dropped, and the 15 minutes timeframe to complete the quiz allowed for minor delays in getting to class.
Outcomes Achieved
Slightly over 75% of the class used the Socrative app on their smart phones/iPads/laptops to take the quiz each week. After nine weeks of the semester in a class of 29, only one student was tardy and eight students were absent. For the students who chose to use Socrative, there were no reported problems. The faculty teaching the course found the Socrative app simple to use, and reports of the class performance, as individuals and as a whole, were easily emailed to the instructor for record keeping.
Conclusions
The Socrative app is an easy-to-use free technological tool that can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom, one of which is to facilitate in-class quizzes as a strategy to encourage students to come to class and to be on time. Designated instructional support technicians dedicated to school of nursing units are valuable in assisting faculty in finding and using appropriate technology that might enhance learning. Future research might assess how additional classroom uses of Socrative enhance learning outcomes as well as studies that assess other apps that potentially impact student learning.