Omnivorous Surfer

used by permission

Thanks to a former colleague, I was reminded of the FREE online quiz software I used to use. On investigation, I found that it is still available and still FREE. Perhaps some who read this may find it useful.

QuizStar is one of several online tools made available at 4teachers.org. Students can take quizzes or tests you have created and then see their results and review their individual answers immediately. As the instructor, you will have a report that looks much like a gradebook for that assignment and can also view their individual test "papers" as though they had been printed and scored.

One of the things I especially appreciated was the listing at the bottom of the test report page showing the number of students answering each question correctly and incorrectly. This allowed me to quickly identify a "bad" question and/or a concept that needed to be retaught. I could usually address the latter as soon as everyone had completed the test.

To prepare the students to take a quiz using QuizStar, I would create a simple 3-question quiz and make sure that they would miss one question. Then they could look at their test and see how to read the markings for the ones they missed. I would always give students the option of taking a paper test using QuizStar's printout.

I won't go through all the features; you can read those on the QuizStar website if you are interested. I used this program for at least 10 years when I was teaching in a lab and found it to be beneficial for teaching and learning and quite a timesaver, too.