Webwatcher 27

Advertisment

spot_img

Russell Stannard recommends a website where you can create your own on-line quizzes.


http://school.discovery.com/quizcenter/quizcenter.html  

I think that of all the websites I know, this one offers the most surprising facility I have ever found. I recently gave a talk to a group of university teachers at my university and they were amazed to think that such a site existed. I am going to show you how to create your own on-line quizzes, which can be used for homework or as tests, using this site. You can include pictures, links and even sounds; they can be stored on the server itself, and they cost absolutely nothing. Not only that, but you can choose to have the results of any tests that your students do sent straight to your email. The best part, though, is that to use this site you need absolutely no technical skills at all.  

Step one  

When you go to the site, the first thing you will need to do is log in. Although you don’t have to pay to use this site, you do have to enter your details. They haven’t sent me any unwanted spam mail, so it seems fine. This is actually the hardest part of the process. You will notice some of the questions have an asterisk (*) – this means you must answer them. When you open the first page, read the information and you will notice a link on the page that says ‘Join my Discovery’. This will take you to the page where you can enter your details. Don’t forget to take a note of the details you enter!  

Step two  

Once you have logged in, you will be taken to a page where you need to click on ‘Go to Quiz Center’. On the next page, there is a menu of things you can do on the right-hand side of the screen, Click on ‘Create a Quiz’.  

Step three  

The first thing you must do is to give your file a name. I used ETpro1 and ETpro2 for the ones I have made you. This is not the name of the quiz, simply the name of the file, its URL. You can then choose how many questions you want to have in the quiz and also how you want it to be corrected (I have my students’ results emailed to me directly from the site). You also choose the type of questions. You can have true/false, multiple choice or even a mixture. If you choose multiple choice, you will have to say how many choices you want for each question. The default number is four. Once you have made your choices, click on the ‘Submit information’ button.  

Step four

In the next step you don’t have to do anything at all, if you are not intending to have links or pictures with your questions. I suggest that the first time round you don’t include anything extra and just make a basic quiz. Then, once you have got the hang of it, you can start to produce quizzes with links and pictures. The great thing about having links is that it means that each question can have a link to a webpage where the students can find the answer if they don’t know it. But for now, just ignore this page and click on the ‘Go to next page’ button.  

Step five  

You now produce the questions for your quiz. This is where you actually put the title of the quiz (ie the title that will appear at the top of the page). You can also add your name. If you are making a multiple-choice quiz, then don’t forget to indicate which of the answers is correct (you simply click on a check box). You can also choose how you want it to be displayed. For the moment, just leave it on the default setting. At the end you can add a link as well. This is not a link for the individual questions, but one for the whole quiz. I usually leave this blank. Now click on the ‘Make quiz file’ button and your quiz will be made. You will immediately be given its URL. Select this URL and save it in a Word document. You can then print it out and give copies to the students so they can do the quiz for homework. I have begun to create a lot of these quizzes for my Spanish students. Instead of always doing written homework, they can go on-line. Their results are emailed to me from the website, so I know how they are doing. Of course, I don’t make this compulsory as some students don’t have on-line access, but about 70% of students are using the quizzes.  

With this site you can administer your tests, edit them and change them. This can all be done from the opening page (URL above). If you don’t use the system for six months, then your work will be taken off the server, otherwise there is no problem. It is amazing to think that you can make your own quizzes, load them onto a server, administer them and have your students access them, all for free.  

Over to you  

Try these two examples, which I have made so that you can see how the site works. The first has true/false trivia questions. The second is a very simple multiple-choice test on the past simple and past participle.  

http://school.discovery.com/quizzes15/russell1955/ETpro1.html http://school.discovery.com/quizzes15/russell1955/ETpro2.html

For a fun quiz on dinosaurs, which includes pictures, go to: http://school.discovery.com/quizzes/cc_jobeh/dinotest1.html


Russell Stannard is a senior lecturer in ICT and multimedia at the University of Westminster. He has an extensive publishing background in ELT and is currently working with BBC Worldwide on various CD ROMs and with Macmillan Hong Kong on a primary course. He also teaches English and English at Sutton Adult Education College, UK.


This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 27, 2003


More articles

spot_img

Recent articles