Online quizzes are great for English learning and teaching! They are multi-purpose, potentially individualized, and scale-able. (Nevertheless, you should make sure the quiz suits the needs of the specific class you are teaching.)
They are multi-purpose because teachers can used them for pre-teaching/learning to access and activate the students' prior knowledge of a subject, upon which to build and expand. Pre-teaching quizzes can create curiosity and motivate students to learn something new. Teachers can use online quizzes during the teaching process as motivating exercises, which can be expanded when students need deeper explanations. Students, studying by themselves can use online quizzes to monitor their own progress. Finally, teachers can use post-learning online quizzes for formative assessment.
Online quizzes are potentially individualized because teachers can give the students the choice of whether to take a quiz, when to take a quiz, where to take a quiz (in school, at home, or on the bus in-between), and how many times to take the quiz. (Of course, most teachers standardize things and make these decisions for the students, but they really shouldn't! Let the kids feel some autonomy over how they learn. Different people learn in different ways, so when possible, give them choices.) Some online quiz tools are also becoming increasingly individualized because computers can figure out when a student knows enough about sub-topic A, so they spend more time investigating the student's knowledge about sub-topics B, C, etc.
Online quizzes are scalable because teachers can create them for students receiving one-on-one tutoring, small groups, entire classes, and MOOCs encompassing tens of thousands of students across the globe. (Of course, more sophisticated tools create online quizzes for MOOCs, but the concept is the same.)
As noted above, online quizzes are administratively easy formative assessment tools. A teacher can get a sense of what all the students know, or do not know, about a topic in order to decide if to review the material or to continue to the next item. In the same way, a motivated student, studying alone, can use online quizzes as formative self-assessment tools to decide to move on to the next topic. Alternatively, the online quizzes can help teachers find particular students that need more, or deeper, review to bring them up to the general knowledge level in the class.
But please note: Online quizzes are terrible summative assessment tools! The relatively high stakes involved in summative assessment will seduce many students to cheat: find the answer online or in a book during a closed-book quiz, or call up a classmate, who is taking the same online quiz. In addition, there is an unacceptable chance of a student receiving a poorly structured question in an online quiz, which weakens the reliability of a summative grade based on that online quiz. (Take a look at the heated arguments among English teachers about the right answer to particular Bagrut exam questions! These questions were formulated by a group of English exam-creation experts, but yet they cause confusion among English teachers.) Why should a student lose 10% (or whatever one question represents) of a high-stake grade because the teacher created a bad question? (This is also true of printed quizzes, but the number of online quizzes is on the rise for many reasons: saving paper and ink, easy collection, automatic grading, re-usability, etc.)
This lesson will present a range of online quiz tools; but for each of them, you must create well structured questions to get fairly reliable answers.
There are a number of reasons to use frontal digital (online) quizzes:
They can be interesting pre-teaching hints of what is to come, accessing prior knowledge to help with the new learning experiences.
They can be an informative and in-real-time formative evaluation of which students learned the material and who needs more help.
They can serve as a fun review of the material.
They can be useful formative assessments of what to teach in the next class.
Going over the answers in class can lead to interesting discussion that might "fill in the holes" where students have still having problems.
Low-stress quizzes can be a motivating break from the normal class routines.
If you construct the quiz with thought, it will allow strong students to shine but not throw a spotlight on weaker students. (Unfortunately, some weaker students will be frustrated, but the teacher might be able to find them and provide extra help.)
Please note: Do not use these digital quizzes as a high-stake summative assessment tool. The temptation and ability to cheat will make it counter-productive. Let the kids know that this is a fun procedure that allows you to know what to teach in the next lesson.
While there are many frontal digital quiz tools, one of the best is Kahoot!, which can also be used outside of class (in the "challenge" mode).
Recent research (please read the abstract and conclusions) indicates that promoting meta-cognition before and after exams and quizzes helps students to learn the material better. Have the students consider what they know and don't know about the subject material before an exam. Have them consider what the exam meant in terms of indicating what they know and don't know.
Kahoot! used to be an extremely useful free tool for classwork and homework. Unfortunately, it no longer is. The free option only allows 10 participants and its entrance pages have become very cluttered.
Quizizz (https://quizizz.com/) is an alternative to Kahoot!, with a good free version. It also has AI features that can save the teacher a lot of time in creating an online quiz. Here's Russell Stannard explaining how to use Quizizz in a 15 November 2023 video. (Hopefully, the interface will not have changed much since then. This was the best tutorial I could find.)
One A.I. feature to point out is feeding Quizzis a YouTube video URL and getting a quiz based on the content. (Of course, you should check the quiz before using it!) Here's Russell Stannard explaining this A.I. feature in a short (less than 10 minutes) 3 December 2023 video:
Lately Kahoot! has added a number of annoying Webpages at the beginning of the TEACHER's account. This is one of many reasons you might want to examine some of the alternatives. Here is an online quiz tool that one of my Cambridge College students suggested: Blooket, which seems to be aimed at younger learners. Here are three short tutorials about Blooket that the student created:
Blooket tutorial1: https://youtu.be/2ODNfQ0PfRQ
Blooket tutorial 2: https://youtu.be/45sp7FsQCUg
Blooket tutorial 3: https://youtu.be/TdgN2UxEwmc
Another way to learn about Blooklet is to watch this excellent 26 September 2024 tutorial created by Russell Stannard.
In April 2022, Russell Stannard suggested using the free version of Baamboozle as an alternative to Kahoot! Click here to watch his 22-minute video explaining how to use Baamboozle and how to sign up for the free version.
Socrative (https://www.socrative.com/) is similar to Kahoot!, but has a number of formats for the quiz or game.
Here's Russell Stannard explaining Socrative in November 2020, focusing on how to use Socrative via Zoom:
Many grad-students come to this course with previous knowledge of Quizlet. Please be aware of new changes in Quizlet, which we will deal with, below
Quizlet is *not* an online quizzing tool like the previous ones discussed. Yes, it does quiz a set of items, but more important, it helps students learn the set of items. It includes a number of graduated exercises that promotes memorization in a number of formats. Many teachers and students really enjoy Quizlet.
Please watch these two segments from Russell Stannard's 8 January 2024 video about the new AI options (and other powerful tools) for effectively using Quizlet. This is a great video! The first section also includes the combination of the advanced features of Google Translate with Quizlet.
Here's Part 1 of the edited video:
Here's Part 2 of the edited video. It deals with the AI options (still in Beta) within Quizlet.
For more information about using AI options in Quizlet, watch this 8 May 2024 Russell Stannard video.
Caveat: Some of the exercises in Quizlet take material from different items in a set while presenting a multiple choice question. This can lead to having more than one correct answer, for which Quizlet only recognizes one. If a student chooses a correct answer and is then told that his choice is incorrect, it can be very frustrating and counter-productive. So, when you create Quizlet sets, you have to make sure that none of the "answers" (words or pictures) can be used for other items in the same set.
You might want to check out two AI tools that create quizzes for free (at the time of this writing):
Question Well:
Question Well promises to create quizzes in multiple formats and at multiple levels. The free version produces multiple-choice questions and "essential questions." The commercial version also produces fill-in-the-blank questions and questions with longer textual answers. The quizzes can be exported to Kahoot!, Quizizz, Gimkit, Canvas, Blooklet, MOODLE, Schoology, Google Slides, and Google Forms.
Conker:
Conker promises to create quizzes in a variety of formats, with many options to customize the quizzes. The free version allows 5 quizzes, which presumably can be replaced.
After two free tries, you have to pay 8 dollars a month to make up to 12 AI-generated quizzes from YouTube videos (or other videos). The quizzes are in a gamified format. Russell Stannard posted this enthusiastic video about Kwizie.ai on 4 March 2024.
Click here to watch this video about using A.I. with various online tools.
Warning!!! If you ask an AI tool to create a quiz, make sure you examine each question and each possible answer very carefully. AI can, and does, make mistakes. And make sure that the correct answers in multiple-choice questions don't appear in the same location in each question!
Although this lesson has focused on creating your own online quizzes, with your own content, please be aware that the Internet is full of pre-existing English quizzes (focusing on grammar, reading comprehension, etc.) with differing levels of explanations. Click here to watch Russell Stannard describe five of the best such Websites. (Optional)
Please note: Late homework will be penalized 20% of the initial grade. Your first post leads to your Kahoot! and is worth 60% of this lesson's grade. The second post is worth 40%.
1. Open a free account at Quizizz (or an online quiz generator that you like better), if you don't already have one.
2. As soon as possible, create a two-question Quizizz. You can use AI-generated questions as long as you check them carefully. (Normally, you would be creating activities with 10 to 15 questions, but this is just to show that you know how Quizizz works. In addition, you don't want to eat up you classmates' time when they use your exercise.) Make sure that any time limitations give people time to respond.
3. Post the URL to the Lesson 15 discussion forum in MOODLE. Post the URL and the CODE so that other students can do your quiz. (PLEASE NOTE: ONLY HAVE TWO QUESTIONS!!! Don't make your classmates' lives any more stressful than they are now.)
4. Do at least THREE Qizizz exercises that other students posted in the Lesson 15 discussion forum in MOODLE.
5. Go back into your teacher's Quizizz account and see the results of studemts that did your exercise.
6. In the Lesson 15 forum, answer the following questions in a brief second post.
What was your prior knowledge online quizzes (other than Google Forms) before this lesson?
What was your prior knowledge about AI-generated quizzes before this lesson?
Do you see yourself using online quizzes with your students? Why? Why not?