Using Quizizz for a formative assessment in IB DP Physics
Introduction
Quizizz is a free online quiz maker and sharing platform. It can be used for review / formative assessment and comes with some cool (and some more gimmicky) features such as instant feedback, funny (sic) memes between questions, background music, and — usefully — breakdowns of correct responses, a ‘league table’ of accuracy and other useful data.
My objective for this task was formative. Using multiple choice questions for the IB DP Physics AHL topic of Wave Phenomena I wanted to assess student comprehension of the subtopics (SHM, Resolution, Doppler, etc) both so they could identify what topics to focus on for revision and I could identify any topics of widespread weakness that I could address with the class.
To this end I used the IB questionbank service to create a 20-question multiple choice quiz:
In designing the quiz I ensured a more or less even distribution of the subtopics. Using MC questions only would allow for more rapid test taking and response, although the unit quizzes I use include (for now) short answer questions as well. It was my intention to enter individual response success onto a spreadsheet to help me analyse the overall comprehension levels in the class.
Application
It was Lina who suggested that instead of a traditional paper quiz I instead transfer to an online platform. I looked at Spiral, which is really nice, but is really for more teacher controlled review (I wanted self pacing through the quiz) before settling on Quizizz.
Having created an account, I created the quiz and started to add questions. This was not a completely straightforward process. The Questionbank output often looked like this:
In order to load the question content I copied and pasted the text, and then saved the image separately before uploading it (each question in Quizizz accepts one image). For the answers I thought I would save time and took a screenshot of the A, B, C, D response table and then put that image in each of four response choices. This ended up looking something like this.
Note that the text doesn’t fit in the box , the student needs to scroll which isn’t a huge deal but is annoying. The diagram worked well, although there was one question with a larger and more complicated graph that was more difficult to see in the provided area. Finally the four responses are — as you have doubt noticed — unlabelled. By default the response items are shuffled, which makes this impossible. There is an option to turn off the shuffling, but I will next time rewrite the responses to avoid this confusion.
Another problem was with the use of equations. Quizizz currently has only limited formatting options (bold, italics, superscript, subscript, etc), hence any more complicated formatting needed to be done using images. It works, but it is rather clunky.
Other questions of a simpler nature were much easier to implement. This is definitely the use case that the developers were expecting and more accommodating of:
One other aspect of question setting was the ability to implement a timer. The expectation for IB DP Physics MC questions is 90 seconds per question. Given the need to adapt to the presentation format I chose 2 minutes — and this worked well in practice.
Implementation
I set the quiz (known as a game by this app) as a “Homework”, although a “Live game” may have worked as well. The homework option lets you specify a time by which the quiz should be complete as well as other options:
Require login: Essential for our purpose. Students create / use an account and this lets the teacher track progress and gather data.
Student attempts: In other circumstances I might allow unlimited retesting, but I wanted to gather data on their first attempt, so I set this to 1.
Show answers in game: This option determines what happens when the student chooses an answer. It will either let them know if they are correct AND (if incorrect) highlight the correct answer before moving on, or it will let them know if correct (but not highlight the correct answer), or just move on with no feedback. I chose the validate only option, but in future would probably not give immediate feedback. Given the time limit per question I’d rather students focussed on the current question rather than analysing their previous response.
Show leaderboard: This lets the students see who is answering questions correctly or not. Something I don’t personally think is useful in this context.
Show answers post game: I selected yes, but on reflection it may be better only to let them see the answers so they must actually check their notes / other resources to determine the correct answer. The more the student engages with the material the better the learning!
Question timer: The timer length was set alongside the questions, but this allows you to disable the timer if you wish. I kept it enabled as I wanted to reproduce the authentic exam experience (in a low stakes setting) and ensure the students were finished in time to conduct an in-class debrief.
Shuffle questions: I left on. I was actively monitoring the class, but it works as a simple anti-collusion mechanism I believe a random mixture of topics promotes learning.
Shuffle responses: This was my great error. I accidentally left this enabled, which meant that my grouped MC responses didn’t work as the responses were indistinguishable from each other. The better option, anyway, is to make sure each response is individually distinguishable.
Play music: Off — particularly as this was done in-class.
Show memes: Also off. I found the provided selection of questionable worth and humour. However there is the option to add your own, which I may well explore!
Analysis
While the test is in progress you, the teacher can monitor live updates of student progress and responses. Additionally there is a very useful summary of student responses to the questions:
By mousing over the image you can see what incorrect responses were selected and how long it took the student to answer. Overall you can which students need more support, and which questions / topics were more problematic … which was the goal of the whole exercise from a formative perspective!
It is possible to download the data into a spreadsheet
for further analysis if desired.
Conclusion
I wish the system was more friendly with equations, and there is certainly some setup time required, but overall student feedback was good and the data gathered was effective for my desired purpose. I’ll be using it again.