Tools change over time or become obsolete. What we use now may be replaced by a new tool next year. For example icq. 
But pedagogical goals and principles hardly change. That’s why we need to choose the tools that fit the context and serve our goals and principles and adapt to changing technology to fulfill our pedagogical needs.

1. Mohamed Ansary
www.mohamedansary.com
mansary@email.arizona.edu
School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies
The University of Arizona
Using Technology for Increasing Students’ Engagement, Collaboration &
Digital Literacy in the Arabic Language Classroom

2. Background
• Tools change over time or become obsolete. What we use now may
be replaced by a new tool next year. For example: icq.
But pedagogical goals and principles hardly change.
• That’s why we need to
• choose the tools that fit the context and serve our goals and principles.
• adapt to changing technology to fulfill our pedagogical needs.

3. • Developing Multiple Literacies
• Providing Immersion
• Fostering Collaboration, Engagement & Interaction
• Promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence
The Study:
Principles & Goals of Courses, including
Content Courses

4. • Explore effectiveness of the use of a technology-based tool called “Socrative” in
and out of the classroom in tracing the formative assessment of 30 students over a
15-week semester, including a content course.
• Overview of the functions of “Socrative” & how it can increase the students’
engagement, collaboration and digital literacy.
• Students' Survey on the Use of Socrative - The Arabic Language Program
The University of Arizona - School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies
• Testimonials.

6. Socrative is a student response system that empowers teachers to engage their
classrooms through a series of educational exercises via smartphones, laptops,
and tablets. (www.socrative.com)
Socrative is a student response formative assessment system
(SRFAS) that can be used for engagement, collaboration,
effectiveness and increasing students’ Digital Literacy.
www.mohamedansary.com

8. Increasing the students’ Digital Literacy.
Students are encouraged to use the Arabic Keyboard.

9. Writing homework for 401 students = 3rd semester
2nd Year

10. 406 Class = 6th Semester = 3rd Year
Content-Based Course

11. Socrative for the Final Review
402 Class = 4th Semester = 2nd Year

13. Students' Survey on the Use of Socrative - The Arabic Language
Program – The University of Arizona - School of Middle Eastern &
North African Studies

14. Being encouraged more than once by my instructor to correct
myself and redo the quizzes / homework on “Socrative”
increases my desire to learn, gives me self-confidence, and lets
me self-assess continuously.
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
N.B. This is how we “create a supportive classroom environment”.

16. One of the strength points of Socrative is that it
provides immediate feedback.
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

17. Having the questions of a "Reading Text" on Socrative in
advance encourages me not to ignore or skip it as I used
to do "sometimes" in the past.
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

18. Doing my daily homework on Socrative with
immediate feedback helps me a lot and even
encourages me not to skip it
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

19. Why Socrative rather than any other tech tool?
Benefits / Pedagogical Implications
1-Providing immediate feedback
2-Taking attendance
3-Increasing the students’ digital literacy (i.e. using the Arabic keyboard)
4-Transforming the students’ homework from the traditional way to an interactive way.
5-Saving all quizzes and tasks for future use
6-Self paced learning
7- Increasing students’ autonomy
8-Visualizing students’ understanding
9- Creating supportive classroom environment
10- Types of learning: Writing - Reading - Listening

21. “Socrative is very useful application for a student to make review on the topics that
he/she learned. I did not know this application until my Arabic professor Mohamad
Ansary introduced it to us in the class last spring. He used this app. to make review,
to keep us on the track, to push us to do our homework and to take attendance.
Socrative helped a lot improving my Arabic, keep myself updated, and follow the
topics since as a student sometimes it sounds tempting to not do homework and not
submit your paper daily. Also it makes everything easier for the instructor including
taking attendance and answering the questions in the class instead of reading the
papers of each student and grading as well as giving feedback.
After I knew this application, I started using it for my own classes. Las semester, I
was working as a TA and leading discussion classes of Religion of Islam. I realized
that my students participated more, they paid more attention to the class and they
had less absences because of Socrative. Also, I got good feedbacks from my students
about Socrative. Socrative led them to do weekly review before coming to class
because they knew that I prepared small quiz for them.
In short, Socrative provides a good opportunity to learn and teach for students and
instructors.”
Atacan Atakan
Ph.D. Student
School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies
The University of Arizona
Testimonials

22. “Socrative is the teacher’s friendly, fun, and most effective classroom engagement
app. By utilizing this free and flexible tool, educators of all subject matters are able
to initiate formative and summative assessments in the classroom. Moreover,
by creating content-rich quizzes, bell work, and exit tickets, educators are able to
display instantly the students’ individual/and or team responses followed by feedback
to spark dynamic learning, peer-to-peer communication, team competition, and
problem- solving. I highly recommend using this instantaneous cloud-based platform.”
Nabila Hammami, Ph.D.
Arabic Instructor/World Language Department Head
Dearborn Public Schools
Fordson High School
English Instructor
Henry Ford College