Want to save trees, integrate technology in the classroom and create a way for students to make up missed work on their own time? Online quizzes may help!
The “flipped classroom,” Khan Academy, Smart Boards, and iPads are presently trendy topics in the education realm. Integration of technology seems to be the buzz in K-12 education, but technology is more than a trend: current technologies have the power to revolutionize K-12 education.
Some of the above mentioned trends and products may not be easily implemented, for a variety of reasons: some are cost prohibitive (iPads) and district policies and contract issues (the flipped classroom) can stand in the way, but other tools — such as the ability to create free online quizzes — are available to nearly every Western educator. Technology alone won’t revolutionize education though. It’s all about how we engage with technology and apply it in ways that are meaningful to both students and teachers alike.
Simply placing an iPad in the hands of every student will neither enhance learning, nor will it create more expert teachers. We have to have plans for how to utilize that technology and expected outcomes for students after such technology is implemented. The same could be said for using online quizzes: if you’re making an online quiz solely to demonstrate that you can and you haven’t considered any other reasons why creating online quizzes could benefit both you and your students, there is probably no point in creating an online quiz. Here, we’ll consider reasons to utilize online quizzes and how they may benefit both you as a teacher and your students. We’ll also take a look at some of the different (free) applications available to teachers who are interested in implementing online quizzes as a classroom tool.
Benefits of Online Quizzes
Why should educators consider using and creating online quizzes? Blogger Jonathan Jarc, in Trending Education, provides great motivation in his January 2011 article “Using Google Forms–Making Online Quizzes with Google Docs & Grading Quizzes.” Jarc says, “For teachers, grading quiz results for papers manually is definitely a hard job.” When I taught high school English, grading quizzes was always time consuming.
Then, there is the physical act of toting papers to and from the office. While some teachers may opt to stay late grading papers to avoid the transportation issue, others may need to get home to families for various reasons. Even if you don’t face the transportation problem, online quizzes reduce the paper burden, save resources, and provide the flexibility to leave the office as the quizzes may be accessed from any location where you have internet access. The above considerations impact teachers, but how do online quizzes benefit students and the educational process?
There are multiple benefits to students and the learning process:
- Students may easily make up a quiz (or even take it the same day) if they missed it during class or were absent when the quiz was given.
- Instead of giving up valuable face time with students for the purpose of assessment, students could take some quizzes out of class. Assessment still occurs, but no instructional time is lost. This is one way in which teachers can implement an element of the flipped classroom (the hotlink provides a graphic description from Mindshift, KQED in the San Francisco Bay Area).
- A teacher could require students to complete an assessment as homework over the weekend and gain valuable insight into what the students know, what they don’t know, and what needs to be revisited in class the following week.
These are only a few potential benefits to students and the instructional process, but hopefully they help to illustrate why teachers should consider utilizing technology that already exists to enhance productivity, instruction, and learning.
Online Quiz Options and Examples
Now that we’ve established the potential value of online quizzes for both students and teachers, let’s take a look at some of the different methods and applications available to educators for creating and delivering online quizzes. The focus here is on free, accessible,and relatively easy to use programs and applications ranging from cloud resources to iPod and Android apps. The search query, “create free online quizzes,” will yield a number of results, but we’ll narrow the focus to some of the programs and applications that have been more widely implemented to get us started. Below are brief program descriptions along with links to find the applications.
- For the more tech-savvy, Google Forms allows the creation of a variety of quiz questions from open-ended paragraph form, drop-down lists, check boxes, and multiple choice to name a few options. The link will direct you to a live self-grading quiz form I created using five different question formats. You can use spreadsheet formulas to grade the quizzes you create.
- ClassMarker offers a free online test-maker to educators. Tests are very customizable and one needn’t be familiar with spreadsheet applications in order to use the software. You will need to create a free account at ClassMarker.
- ProProfs has been around for a number of years and has received high marks from users. The link provides an overview and free tour. The program offers a free trial period but is otherwise a subscription service.
- QuizStar, a 4teachers tool is now free. QuizStar self-describes as “…a Web-based quiz maker that enables you to create, administer and automatically grade your quizzes online!”
- Quibblo is another web-based platform for creating and hosting quizzes. One interesting feature is the “Create a Story” option on the site. The service has been available for several years and is recommended for teachers in several online articles.
- For Android tablet or iPad users, there is a fantastic cross-platform app called Socrative Teacher. This is a “smart-response” system similar to the clickers used in some schools that allows users to interact and vote in real-time using Android phones, iPods, iPhones, Android tablets and laptops. The app is free to install and use and operates cross-platform as above noted.
Educators can benefit from considering how implementing online quizzes can benefit both students and the teacher. This new technology tool can serve to streamline the quiz and testing process for students and educators alike.