So, in the spirit of my previous Edmodo post, let me count the ways my students and I love Edmodo Quizzes:
- It's easy for teachers to create and save quizzes. All teachers have to do is click on "Quiz" at the top of their home screen, and then select "Create a Quiz," and they are then taken to the quiz creation screen. Everything about this screen is intuitive, from adding questions, selecting the correct answer (something I keep forgetting to do! argh!), and choosing the question type. Also, as you create quizzes, they are automatically saved and can be recalled from the home screen by selecting "Load a previously created quiz." As with anything you create, just make sure you use a naming system so you can easily find your desired quiz after creating it. You can find out how to make a quiz in Edmodo by viewing my tutorial below.
- It's easy for students to use. The first time I gave an Edmodo quiz (as a virtual exit slip), all I had to show my high school students was how to click on the quiz from their home screens. From there, they took the quiz with absolutely no problems, and I haven't had a problem since with any student taking the quiz. As I said before, the user interface is very intuitive, and students quickly found out they could go back and check all their answers before submitting their quizzes, click on links and pictures attached to questions, and receive their answers immediately.
- It allows teachers to give students effective and immediate feedback. Teachers can allow students to see their results immediately (the default setting), or they can uncheck that option and reveal those results later (useful if you are giving the same quiz to multiple sections during the day). I usually leave this setting on, because my students have overwhelmingly stated that they like to know how they did right after they take their quiz. Also, students can then ask questions about why certain answers were wrong/right immediately after the quiz, and learning can take place at that time. For more specific feedback, there is a box where teachers can leave comments below each question (no matter what question type) when you access the completed quizzes. Students can see these comments when they access their quiz results.
- It allows quizzes to be used for formative or summative assessments. When you are finished creating your quiz and click on the "Assign Quiz" button, you will be presented with an option to "Add Quiz Score to Gradebook." This means that if you are giving the quiz as a formative assessment, you can leave this box unchecked and the scores won't affect student scores. If you want to use this as a summative assessment, then check mark that box, and the scores will be automatically entered into the Edmodo gradebook. In order to help you analyze your quiz data, when you click on the quiz from your home screen to view the results, there is an overview of how your students did on each question using pie graphs to represent the percentage of students who got each question right & wrong.
- You can choose from many different question types. There are four question types available: Multiple Choice, True/False, Fill in the blank, and Short Answer. Edmodo quizzes will score fill in the blank, but students must write exactly what you write in as the answer or it will be marked wrong. Short answer must be scored by you looking at each answer individually. You then click either "Correct" or "Incorrect," and then you can give students partial credit for answers that are partially correct. You can also leave feedback as to what students got wrong and how they can fix it using a comments box. One additional option you have regarding questions is the ability to load a previous question from any of the quizzes you have created into a new quiz by clicking on the "Load" button on the quiz creation screen.
- Quizzes can be reassigned. If you have students that accidentally exit out of a quiz too early or if students look at all the questions without answering them and then exit the quiz, Edmodo will mark all of the questions wrong, and you will have students raising panicky hands in the air at you. However, Edmodo allows you to reassign the quiz to those individual students. You can select the quiz, and it will open up a copy for editing (you can't actually assign them the originally titled quiz) that has been renamed "Copy of <quiz title>." Click on "Assign this Quiz," and you can then assign students who need to take this quiz by typing their names in the "Send to" box.
- Links, pictures, and documents can be added to questions or answer choices. As a science teacher, this feature has been extremely useful for me. For example, I am currently teaching an ecology unit in which one of my objectives is to have students interpret graphs of different kinds of population growth. I have been able to attach images of those graphs to the question stems themselves (if I ask a question about one graph) or I can attach images to individual answer choices (if I want them to choose a graph that would fit the population growth scenario presented in the question stem). Students simply click on "Preview" next to the image thumbnail to see a larger version. I have received a lot of positive student feedback about being able to do this, because they know how badly my biology drawings on the board can scar them for life. My only suggestion is, if you're forgetful like me, to preview the quiz before assigning it so you can make sure you have attached all of the documents or links you wanted to attach because you can't do this after the quiz is assigned. To attach image files or other documents, simply upload them first to your Library and then click on "Library" underneath the question or answer choice during quiz creation. To attach links to questions, click on "Link" below the question or answer choice and paste the URL of your choice.
Below you will find some screenshots to help illustrate these most-loved features of mine (click on the pictures for a larger view), or you can view a short screencast I made on how to create a quiz using all four question types. Also, check out these resources for more information:
- Edmodo Blog: Enhancements: Quiz Updates and Resources (has links to other tutorials)
- Frequently Asked Questions About Quizzes
- Creating a Quiz Using Edmodo Video
- Edmodo Help