Quiz Tools, MCQ Tools
What are they?
Quiz tools or multiple choice question tools are tools that enable the building of short quizzes that can be automatically marked by the system requiring no human intervention. As required these results can be used for summative assessment or to provide formative feedback to students. At their most simple these tools are text based, but increasingly they incorporate multimedia elements. While these tools might be assumed to only be useful in assessing lower level learning when their use is well designed, they can be surprisingly powerful. Common question types include:
- Drag-and-Drop
- Fill-in-the-blank
- Hotspot
- Matching
- Multiple choice
- Multiple response
- Numeric questions
- Pull-Down List (selection question)
- Ranking (Rank in Order)
- Select-a-blank
- True/False? or Yes/No?
- Word response (text match)
Most VLEs have this functionality integral to them, although they are usually less sophisticated than the standalone tools. It is also possible to build much of this functionality using generic programming skills or tools such as flash.
How can I use them with my students?
Effective and timely feedback is one of the few education interventions proven to improve student performance. Whilst the range of question types that these tools can handle does not suit all subjects and levels the sophistication of what can be achieved is greater than many realize and these tools can effectively automate large scale implementation with these techniques. As well as being extremely powerful for formative assessment, diagnostic testing and thus reactive learning design can also be a powerful tool. Much of the more sophisticated use of these tools is to be found in the medical sciences with techniques such as confidence based marking and extended matching questions.
Examples
- E-assessment by design: using multiple-choice tests to good effect by David Nicol, University of Strathclyde.
- JISC Effective Practice case study, Assessment for learning, Oxford Brookes University
- There are also useful case studies in the JISC Effective Practice with e-Assessment publication.
Where can I get them?
Most standard VLEs have a tool which offers elements of this functionality. In terms of specialized assessment tools the main commercial player in this space is Questionmark perception, with other popular tools including Hot potatoes and Articulate Quizmaker.
