Quiz Online: How do you do that?

Click on image to go to quizstar

A few weeks ago, one of my grad students Crystal, showed me a website that was "great". I checked it out and moved on.   I did not really check it out in detail.  Last week, I went deeper into the site and found something I have been looking for, for years.  It is a free online quiz service (it also offers much more, but the quiz service is what I was interested in).  Now, I am not a huge test kinda teacher.  I like more authentic assessment, but I have always wanted a way to ask multiple choice questions and have it graded for me for fact recall on my content.  Mike and I had used google docs, but it will not easily grade for you (it can, but a long process).  So any ways, I thought I would give this service a try. 

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I am very glad I did.  It took about two minutes to set up an account.  Basic information was requested: name, login, password, school name, etc. A KEY point, in two weeks no emails from them or any other provider. 

Then I set up classrooms in my account.  Again simple, I created six classes/folders.  To enroll the students I had them click on the student account from the homepage, create an account with their school email, and then search my name.  Once they found it, a click and then they had joined my class.  So, no typing all students names or creating accounts.  The images to the right show this proces and the key ideas below, as well.  

Then I created a 20 question factual quiz on the Renaissance for a test run.  In the quiz manager you: 
-add a title for the quiz
-pick the style of the question (x-choice, T/F, Fill in, Short answer) and build the question.  You can provide feedback (explain the correct answer), if you want, but I did not do that. 

-Next, you pick the right answer and click add more questions. Till you are done.
-You can upload images, maps, and more.  I used a few maps and artwork (see image above)
-When you are done, you click make it active and assign to your classes.  It has time limits, settings for retakes, and more.  I just used the basic version, they take the quiz once and it shows them their score.  
-Student then take the quiz, hit submit and they get a screen with their score, the whole quiz opens showing them what they missed and got right (if you provide feedback it will show here).  
-In my account, I get a report with average, each students score, link to their quiz, and a break down of the quiz.  This provides me with really quick feedback of what students have misconceptions about.  You can see some of the break down in the PP above.   


So, I owe Crystal an apology.  She was right, this is a great site.  You have a great find here and my students loved the instant feedback and it made my job more efficient.  Thanks again Crystal,  Let us know how it works for you. 

The link to quiz star is  http://quizstar.4teachers.org/ 

Cheers, Garth