As teachers, we are all aware of the importance of checking students learning. There are a number of benefits the first of which is it allows us to see what students remember and understand. This can help to inform your planning for subsequent lessons allowing you to revise what you are doing if you feel students need more or less time on a particular topic.
Another benefit is it can provide students with a sense of achievement if they can see they are making progress which is great for their motivation and engagement.
There is a wealth of tools out there that will help you check your students learning using some sort of quiz or online activity and in this month's blog post I'm looking at Quizalize and specifically the new Quizalize Games which launched recently.
Before we dive in and explore the new Games feature specifically, I thought it was worth explaining what is Quizalize for those not familiar with it. Firstly what is it, it is a quiz game creator that lets you create and share quizzes with your students who respond via their own device.
You can either create your own quiz or choose an existing one for the library.
When it comes to creating your own quiz, you can choose from the following question formats: Multiple choice, type an Answer, Scrambled letters, True or False, Categories, linking, Ordering, Jumbled words, and weighted.
You can add an image to your question or to your answers and also add an audio question.
Having chosen a quiz you have a choice of different ways in which you can use it with your students. It can be shared as an interactive quiz, set as homework, set as an exam, or printed as a PDF.
So on to the newly released game feature, what is it, well it is a way of bringing a fun gamification element into your assessment of learning.
Instead of students just viewing a progress bar and leaderboard on the teacher's screen at the front of the class as they answer their questions which is usually the case with these types of quiz tools. Their progress in the quiz is displayed in the form of an animated-style game.
There are 7 games in total with 4 new games recently released these include Battlerzz, The adventures of Kleo the Koala, Bearzz and Rockzz.
In Battlerzz each team chooses a hero from the range of characters, then selects the arena, and the team who answer who answers the most questions correctly wins the battle.
In The Adventures of Kleo the Koala the two teams race up bamboo poles to reach the key of light. The quicker and more accurate the team answers the faster the competitors climb.
Bearzz features two tomato-throwing bears, with the team that answers the most questions correctly earning tomatoes to throw at their opponent.
And finally, there is Rockzz which is in the style of a classic arcade game, every correct answer results in an asteroid being shot in this game the class play against the computer
Different game types include Race, Battle, sports, and Arcade and most can be played in the following modes:
Player v Player
Team v Team
Class v Computer
Having completed the game with your students Quizalize highlights which of them need help by putting them into the following groups, Strong, Almost There and Needs Help so you know who to focus your support on first.
There is also a grade book that lets you track student progress over time, showing their scores for each of the quizzes completed along with an average which can be downloaded as an excel spreadsheet.
Using the subtopic feature you can tag several questions that relate to the same learning objective and then view which students are in
One of the really useful features is that you can assign follow-up activities that the student will see after the quiz, the follow-up activity will vary depending on the score the student achieves. So if a student scores less than 50%, they will see different resources for the student who scored between 50% and 80% and likewise for a student who scores more than 80%.
This follow-up activity could be in the form of a YouTube video a PDF a link to another activity or another quiz, you can either search the existing resources that have been uploaded by the community of Quizalize users, or upload and share your own with your class and the community.
I think the game's feature adds a fun element and would appeal to students across a wide age range and help to improve engagement. I think it could be used either at the start of the lesson to check prior knowledge or at the end of a lesson to check how much students remember the topic has just been covered.
As is the case with most of these types of tools there is a free option that has limited features and various paid subscription options that you choose which can be charged on either a monthly or yearly basis.
Here is my latest infographic in which I highlight the features of Quizalize and provide ideas on how I think you could use it with your students.
To find out more about Quizalize click here