What’s wrong with multiple choice quizzes in modern education?
Their controversial nature: while some educators consider a quiz a childish way to check students knowledge, others reveal its numerous benefits, including but not limited to driving motivation and engagement, reducing plagiarism in academia, creating the right attitude to learning, growing curiosity, and lowering students anxiety.
It looks like quizzes are a must-try ed technique to implement in classrooms so it could help to develop students' research skills, keep them engaged, assess their knowledge and performance, and improve their memory. And yet, it's not that easy for educators to prepare quizzes on a regular basis: due to busy curricula, it's challenging to come up with efficient questions all the time, which, as Jolene A. Kayser writes in her academic paper, “could easily result in burnout.”
But thanks to the digital era with its many ed tools and resources available, teachers can create quizzes and set answer choices that would encourage learners to distinguish details rather than provide downright variants only. Taking into account that tests creation and following check of students answers are time- and energy-consuming, given tools could also help educators organize their work better.
Among the best quiz-makers are the following:
- iSpring Quiz Maker. This tool is not free to use. However, you can download a free trial to check if it meets your educational needs. Easy to use, iSpring is customizable and mobile-ready, which makes it perfect for those practicing e-learning. It allows you to create remarkable and highly-energized quizzes and surveys for engaging your students in the learning process.
- ProProf Quiz Maker. With so many features available, you still need to use a paid version of this tool to get them all. A free version gives you unlimited access to quizzes and questions; while a paid one allows you to track students results, get reports, control privacy settings, create polls and surveys, and more.
- Go Conqr. This free online resource helps teachers create visually attractive and engaging quizzes, integrating tech tools into their classrooms. It lets you share content across multiple platforms, making it easier for students to reach it.
- ClassMarker. Not free to use, this resource is still of a high value among educators, thanks to its numerous features and benefits. It's a testing software for creating custom online quizzes, training tests, educational assessments, distance learning, and online courses. You can create time limit questions, multiple-choice quizzes, essay-type questions, and short answers surveys with this software.
- Edmodo. It's a good resource to connect and collaborate with students by sharing content and customizing the classroom for every learner. Plus, it's an opportunity for parents to access their child’s homework and grades, as well as notes from the teacher. It's a global education network that lets you upload and share quizzes and other educational content, creating collections of your favorite resources.
- Survey Anyplace. This is a tool to engage students and get better insights of their knowledge. Try it for free, creating quizzes and surveys with images, video, or animation. It lets you collect and analyze data in real time. The main features—including unlimited surveys and devices, widgets, offline response, reports and data export, and design capabilities—are available for free. To get extra features, you need to subscribe and choose a plan.
- Riddle. Another free platform to make lists, polls, and quizzes, this tool has a user-friendly and intuitive interface. It is easy to create interactive content, concentrating on its meaning instead of worrying about the tool to share it with your students. All you need is sign up for free and start creating quizzes your students will love.
- Revision Quiz Maker. Available for Apple, Android, and Windows, this free-to-use tool lets users create an unlimited number of quizzes and questions. Its features include multiple- choice questions, matching questions, fill-in- the-blank questions, and more. The tool makes it possible to include images and time limit for questions, as well as reviewing scores of students.
A multiple-choice quiz is an actionable technique to engage students as well as assess their knowledge, and the aforementioned tools can help to structure teachers work for better results. But savvy educators, you need to understand such instruments are not a one-size-fits-it-all solution. So, just add them to your methods of knowledge evaluation and bring them into the classroom from time to time to arouse your mentees' curiosity.
