Student Assessments

Grammarly

"Every day, more than 30 million people and 50,000+ teams around the world rely on Grammarly's generative AI solutions and our real-time writing suggestions to create and strengthen their written communication. Grammarly’s AI-enabled communication assistance augments your skills at every step, helping you write more effectively, efficiently, and confidently" (Grammarly Support, n.d.).

Grammarly is a free, cloud-based automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool that can be used by both students and educators to review spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes in English texts. This personalized AI software also detects plagiarism, gives immediate feedback, and suggests replacements for any identified errors. It also allows users to customize their style, tone, and context-specific language (Grammarly, n.d.). Grammarly can be used to help students with self-correction as well as support teachers in providing feedback more efficiently. Kawashima (2023) found that students viewed Grammarly feedback as more positive than teacher feedback, and perceived feedback as more useful when teacher feedback was combined with Grammarly feedback.

Grammarly is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Users can also copy and paste a document into Grammarly’s Online Editor without having to download the program, if they prefer to do that instead. Although the service is free, users can upgrade to one of two comprehensive plans that offer additional services for only $12-$15/month (Grammarly, n.d.)

Students can use Grammarly to:

· Brainstorm and create outlines

· Cite sources, including generative AI

· Receive real-time feedback

· Make quick and easy adjustments to documents

· Learn to effectively communicate across a wide variety of audiences

· Maintain transparency and integrity with seamless referencing

Grammarly also offers a handbook to help students learn grammar rules and concepts, a blog which offers daily tips and insights, and maintains a strong social media presence to facilitate discussions among followers (Grammarly Support, n.d.).

Sign up for a FREE Grammarly account!

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Socrative PRO for Higher Education

Although Socrative is a technology tool educators can pay for to enhance individual classroom instruction, it is also a valuable, free tool for students to use as well. Instead of just listening to a lecture, the Socrative app uses quizzes, surveys, and team activities to promote engagement and peer interaction, and offer immediate insight about the instruction process. Lim (2017) found that students responded positively to the use of Socrative in a higher education setting, and both student attendance and performance improved in classes where Socrative was incorporated.

One of the key benefits Socrative offers is the ability to create interactive online classrooms that students can access via shareable links which are emailed to those who are registered for the course. Additionally, the quizzes, surveys, and mini-competitions that are created by the instructors assesses the students’ comprehension and evaluates their learning in real time (Socrative, n.d.). The Socrative app can be downloaded to any smartphone, iPad or tablet, or personal computer giving students access to the material when it’s convenient for them. I would utilize this platform to create weekly quizzes and quarterly competitions between classes to develop communication between myself and my students, and to encourage and incentivize peer-to-peer communication

Watch the video below to see how students can take a quiz using Socrative.

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References

Kawashima, T. (2023). Student perceptions of Grammarly, teacher’s indirect and direct feedback: Possibility of machine feedback. Japan Association for Language Teaching Computer Assisted Language Learning Journal (JALT CALL Journal), 19(1), 113–139. https://doi.org/10.29140/jaltcall.v19n1.1017

Grammarly Support. (n.d.). Common questions: How does Grammarly work? Grammarly. https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000090871-How-does-Grammarly-work-

Grammarly. (n.d.) Grammarly for students. https://www.grammarly.com/students

Lim, W. N. (2017). Improving student engagement in higher education through mobile-based interactive teaching model using Socrative. 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2017 IEEE, 404–412. https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7942879

Socrative. (n.d.) Socrative PRO for Higher Education. https://www.socrative.com/higher-ed/