As a nursing educator, evaluation is an essential component to education. The instructor must be able to evaluate learning through the use of validated instruments. One of the more common evaluation strategies is a quiz or test. The internet provides multiple technologies to educators in order to generate quizzes and track students' results. Below I will discuss four quiz generators I trialed over the past week.
JavaScript QuizMaker
One evaluation tool I have discovered is JavaScript Quiz Maker. As the name implies, the instructor is able to create a quiz then embed it into a webpage. A very useful tool if the instructor has created a class webpage or blog site. Below is a practice quiz I created for this blog. Please comment on this post if the quiz does not function properly for the viewer.
Blog Quiz
JavaScript QuizMaker allows the instructor to choose multiple question formats, such as multiple choice, true or false, or short answer. The quiz can be selected to be "practice" or "graded." The quiz above is a practice quiz, thus the student may retake it at any time and no results are sent to the instructor. The graded quizzes allow the instructor to have the results sent to them, however when navigating through the webpage there was not a place to enter an email address. The legitimacy of graded results from this technology is questionable due to the lack of delivery method. Furthermore, I was unable to save my quiz on the website for future editing. If an instructor was teaching a course mulitple times, the inability to save quizzes would probably increase workload each semester. Overall, I was not impressed with this technology, however it was the only one that allowed the instructor to embed the quiz in their own personal website.
Flitsi
Kathy Schrock, a retired Director of Technology at a primary school, created a blog page for educators concerning Web 2.0 technology. One of the quiz generators listed was Flitsi. The webpage is an online poll generator. Originally I thought a poll and a quiz were the same thing; however, on Flitsi you can only create one question at a time. Also, anyone who wants to participate will have difficulty locating the single question poll within the hundreds of other polls. The website is also free for anyone to use, thus the polls are not all education based. For example, on poll asks if you have the desire to be president. Overall I would not recommend this site as a quiz generator for educators due to the limitation of one question and no privacy standards.
Wufoo
Kathy Schrock also listed Wufoo as another evaluation site. My Wufoo quiz can be found here. Wufoo is an online quiz generator providing instructors with many options for customization, storage, collaboration, and reports. Quizzes can have multiple question formats, including a standard Likert scale (as shown in my quiz above). The initial trial registration is free, but only allows the instructor to create three forms, or quizzes. After the free trial, the packages range from $15-$200. The low end package is designed for adjunct faculty and includes 10 forms for one year. However, if the instructor is teaching more than one online course, ten forms would not be sufficient for both classes. Collaboration and sharing of quizzes is supported through the middle and upper subscription levels, thus allowing instructors within the same department share quiz templates. Finally, Wufoo stores the user's quizzes, no capacity noted on website, and creates personalized reports for student scores. Wufoo is user friendly, has customization options, but requires a subscription. I would use the site again if I did not have to pay for the subscription.
QuizStar
QuizStar is a free website created by 4Teachers.org. Originally the site was funded by a grant, offering free quiz generators for teachers. After the grant ran out, subscriptions were required. Now the website is free again because the organization allowed ads to run on the instructor pages. I have found this site to be the most user-friendly, with mid level options, and free to use. The instructor can have mulitple classes, each with their own quizzes and reports. Furthermore, the classes can be set to private, thus eliminating the security issues present in the other technologies. QuizStar does not allow the instructor to post to individual sites or provide weblinks. The students must register themselves or the instructor uses the students' email addresses to register them. After they are registered, the quizzes are assigned through the email addresses. Alerts can be sent out to remind students when quizzes open and close, or for other course information. The quiz questions can contain text, audio, video, and pictures. Hyperlinks can also be added, however I did not have success with mine. One negative aspect to this feature is each media type must be under 1 KB. When adding pictures, I had to resize and crop every one I added in order to meet the size requirement. QuizStar does keep a media repository for each account, thus once you upload it is available to use at any time. In the future, I will definitely utilize QuizStar to create and distribute online quizzes.
Here is a YouTube video discussing how to upload media into QuizStar
Other Resources
Other than tests or quizzes, the Discovery Channel offers a free puzzlemaker. It creates crossword puzzles after you enter 6-7 words. The website is very easy to use and creates the puzzle on a webpage or in text format. The puzzle I created is below with a few of words solved. I created a screenshot, using Jing, because there is no link created when choosing the webpage option.
A crossword is not a typical assignment for secondary education, but can be a fun way to introduce new vocabulary to students. As a unit educator, I can utilize the puzzle to familiarize new staff with the names of common surgical instruments.
Wow Jessica,
ReplyDeleteYou have found and illustrated a lot of great options. I appreciate that you have pointed out the pros and cons of this great variety of teaching adjuncts. You have done a great job of showcasing interactive educations tools.
I can see embedding quiz questions like you have at the bottom of content areas. Thanks for reviewing these programs and writing about them.
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