5 Red Flags and 4 Effective Uses for Quiz Show Platforms

The roar from the classroom next door momentarily distracts your attention. Your colleague's class seems excited about something. Students are cheering, groaning, and obviously engaged in something wonderful. You poke your head out your classroom door to peer into your neighbor's room, and then you see it. Students on the edge of their seats in another riveting game of Gimkit. Whether it’s Gimkit, Quizizz, Kahoot!, Quizlet Live, or Blooket, teachers and students are rattling the sterile and distanced hybrid classroom with some good old-fashioned quiz show review games. 

Formative assessment and immediate feedback are vital parts of the learning process. In looking for ways to assess student learning in an engaging way, teachers have turned to a variety of "Quiz Show" platforms. These platforms offer fast-paced, fun, gamified environments that, on the surface, appear to be exactly what students need. 

While each platform has unique features and gimmicks, they all work in similar ways. Teachers create quizzes by uploading or writing questions. Students participate in real time or asynchronously. Students are rewarded for correct answers, and teachers get feedback on what students got right and wrong. These platforms typically have a free version and a paid version. The paid version usually gives access to premade quizzes and more features. 

These platforms have potential to serve as a fun and interactive way to formatively assess and practice recall-level information, but there is also the possibility of misuse and overuse. If you’re thinking of exploring one or more of these platforms, you should consider the following when planning.

 Five Red Flags for Quiz Show Platforms 

1. They encourage low-level recall learning. These platforms are fun and engaging and create a game-like atmosphere for formative assessment of low-level recall concepts. However, they tend to function well ONLY for low-level, recall of information. They don't seem to work well for practice and reinforcement of any higher level thinking and skills. For assessment and practice of concepts that includes higher level thinking, we have purchased and fully support IXL for both math and literacy.
2. They rely on competitive motivation. Platforms like Gimkit create a competitive fast-paced atmosphere where quick recall of information is rewarded. These platforms tend to engage fast processing students and frustrate slower processing students. Students who engage with these platforms for competitive reasons tend to disengage the moment they see they cannot "win." Students who miss a question will quickly lose interest if they fall behind other players. The game show set-up that rewards faster response times is based on the assumption that slower reaction time means lower levels of understanding. While lack of understanding is ONE reason a student might answer more slowly, there are certainly many examples of students who demonstrate a high level of understanding, but are more deliberate in their thinking. 
3. They rely on extrinsic motivation. Gimkit gives "cash" rewards for correct answers that can be used to buy in-game upgrades. Other platforms reward with points and scores. There is little doubt that internalizing core concepts and developing automaticity of foundational knowledge is a vital precursor to higher level thinking. Using points and other rewards to motivate participation negatively impacts attempts to get students to buy in to the value of learning for a greater purpose. There is certainly a place in instructional design for formative assessment of foundational knowledge, but competitive, extrinsically rewarded recall-based assessment needs to be used sparingly and thoughtfully if you are trying to foster intrinsic motivation for learning. 
4. They offer short-term engagement. Much like the early computer games from the 1980s, and the "clickers" of the early 2000s, these platforms are like fireworks. They tend to be extremely engaging and exciting at first and for a very short period of time, but student interest fizzles out once the novelty wears off. 
5. They may create privacy and security concerns. Since these platforms have not been approved by the district, that means they’ve not been vetted for privacy and security concerns. Any platform that requires students to enter any personal information—such as an email, name, or age—should not be used. Luckily, most platforms work with a teacher account set up and anonymous student participation. With new platforms emerging all the time, teachers need to be extra diligent not to share student information.

Four Effective Uses for Quiz Show Platforms

1. Design for cooperation, not competition. A few platforms, like Quizlet Live, build in cooperative learning games rather than relying solely on competition. Getting students to work together builds a sense of shared responsibility for everyone’s success. Having students work together eliminates the social pressure of competition. Students can be put into pairs or even break down questions as a whole class. 
2. Create games for self-paced practice. Although these platforms were designed for real-time formative assessment, they can also be used for asynchronous student practice. Create a collection of quizzes and games that students can use on their own time and at their own pace for practice. This takes away competitive motivation and social fears of publicly displayed wrong answers. Students can use these platforms to practice and reinforce important concepts. Since students are only competing with themselves, they tend to stick with it longer since there is no sense of falling behind.
3. Get formative feedback while learning is taking place. If you’re relying on these platforms for review games for all or most of your summative assessments, it’s likely that your summative assessment is too focused on recall-level standards. The proper place for recall-level, selected-response questions is to formatively assess student knowledge in order to determine readiness for summative experiences that require students to produce, modify, apply, express, or think critically about that knowledge. In other words, we formatively assess student content knowledge as preparation to summatively assess higher-level applications of that knowledge.
4. Have students create the questions. A great way to creatively assess student knowledge is to have them create their own questions. Students who understand a concept ask better questions and create more sophisticated distractors than students who don’t. By having students create the questions for themselves, you can get a good idea of what they know without the "quiz show" atmosphere.

Currently, the Department of Instructional Technology, working with the Department of Teaching and Learning, has not approved any of these platforms for district-level purchase or support. The large number of quiz platforms currently being used by teachers prevents us from supporting paid versions for all of them. Teachers are currently enjoying the freedom to use the platform(s) that they like best. 

We recommend that teachers continue to use the free versions thoughtfully and sparingly.