Haiden Hibbert
You’ve put in the hard work to create an online course that shares your knowledge and expertise with your audience. But how can you ensure that your students are truly engaging with and retaining the information you’re teaching? One of the most effective strategies is incorporating quizzes into your course! In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the best quiz tools available, as well as some best practices around crafting engaging quiz questions.
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Best quiz tools for your online course
Creating an online course can be a huge undertaking, so it’s important to find a tool that makes crafting quizzes quick and easy. We’ve narrowed down the best five options for course creators of all experience levels, and yes, they all have free plans or trials!
1. Google Forms
If you’re looking for a free quiz tool with basic features, Google Forms might be the perfect option for your online course. You can create custom quizzes and surveys that include any type of question and easily embed them on your website.
Price: Always free!
Key Features:
- Assign point values, set answers, and automatically provide feedback
- Add collaborators
- Manage how responses are collected
- Show a progress bar
- Customize a confirmation message
- Share results summary/analytics with students
2. Survey Monkey
If you’re looking for another free, beginner-friendly option that offers more features than Google Forms, Survey Monkey is a great choice. With the free plan, you can create unlimited quizzes with up to 10 questions each.
Price: Free plan, Premium plans starting at $25/month
Key Features:
- Start from scratch, use a template, or build with AI
- Use free themes to create a professionally-designed quiz
- Customize the look by adding your logo, changing the font, colors (paid account)
- Question bank
- Progress bar
- Embed your quizzes on your website or share a link
3. Typeform
For a sleeker-looking quiz with a modern design, check out Typeform. The free plan is a bit more limited than Google Forms and Survey Monkey (you can create quizzes and collect up to 10 responses before upgrading), but if you want a nicer aesthetic with the same user-friendliness of the other tools, the cost is worth it.
Price: Free plan, Paid plans starting at $25/month
Key Features:
- Unlimited number of quizzes
- Quiz templates
- Design flexibility
- Branching and calculations, scores, and variables (allows you to show your students different questions based on their answers)
- Custom Ending screens to show any message you’d like, depending on the outcome of the quiz
- Export quiz results
4. Quiz Maker
Quiz Maker is a dedicated quiz creation tool that offers a free 7-day trial. The tool offers AI-generated quizzes and feedback, a wide range of question types, tons of integrations, and design flexibility. If you want a more robust quiz tool with lots of features and integrations, QuizMaker is a great option.
Price: Free trial, paid plans starting at $28/month
Key Features:
- Ability to assign grades and certificates
- Auto-grading option
- Leaderboards and timers
- Customizable look and feel
- AI based feedback platform
- Multi-language translations
5. Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a presentation tool that also allows you to create quizzes. This is a great option if you want your quizzes to be visually appealing and offer a more engaging, interactive experience. They have lots of templates you can choose from, and the free plan includes up to 50 quiz takers per month.
Price: Free plan, paid plans starting at $9/month
Key features:
- Add your own company logo and branding
- Word clouds, polls, quizzes, and slides
- Export results to Excel
- Flexible branding and customization
How to add quizzes to your online course
Now that you know about some of the best quiz tools available, let’s talk about how you can incorporate quizzes into your online course. Here are three options to consider:
- At the end of each lesson – A simple way to keep your students engaged is by adding a brief quiz (around 1-3 questions) at the end of each lesson. This serves as a quick check-in to ensure they’ve understood the key concepts covered in the lesson.
- At the end of each module – If your course is divided into modules, consider adding a slightly longer quiz (around 3-5 questions) at the end of each module. This allows you to assess your students’ understanding of the topics covered throughout the module and give students the chance to recap topics before moving onto the next section.
- At the end of the entire course – For a more comprehensive assessment, you can create a longer quiz that covers the content of the entire course (no more than 10 questions). This quiz can serve as a final step for students to complete the course or even earn a certification.
When you create an online course with MemberSpace, you have the flexibility to embed your quizzes or share links to them anywhere within your course!
Why add a quiz to your online course?
As a course creator, quizzes can be one of the most effective tools you have to gain a clearer picture of what’s working well in your course and what areas might need improvement.
Adding quizzes to your online course can also:
- Help students retain information better by reinforcing key concepts
- Allow students to assess their own understanding of the course material, identifying areas where they may need to focus more attention
- Serve as milestones, motivating students to complete the course
- Be used to control the pacing of your course, ensuring students have a solid grasp of each section before moving on to the next
- Help you create personalized learning paths, directing students to additional resources or lessons based on their individual needs and performance (Typeform allows you to create custom End screens based on quiz performance, so you could add in those resources there)
- Be used as requirements for earning course certificates or completing the course
Best practices for writing quizzes
Don’t worry if you’re not an expert quiz creator – these best practices are easy to implement and will help you design assessments that help your students get the most out of your course.
- First, start by thinking about what you want your students to take away from each lesson or module. Jot down the key concepts, skills, or ideas that you want to reinforce. These will serve as the foundation for your quiz questions.
- Next, consider the types of questions you want to include. Mixing things up with multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and short answer questions.
- Aim for questions that are clear and concise. No trick questions!
- When it comes to the length of your quizzes, keep them focused and manageable. For a quick check-in after a lesson, 1-3 questions should suffice. For an end-of-module assessment, 3-5 questions is a good target. And for a comprehensive end-of-course quiz, you can go a bit longer (10 questions max), but make sure your students can complete it in one sitting.
- Finally, before launching your quiz, give it a thorough review. If possible, have a friend take the quiz to ensure it functions smoothly and provides a positive user experience.
Final Thoughts
Incorporating quizzes into your online course is a powerful way to ensure your students are getting the most out of your teaching. By using a quiz tool like Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or Typeform, and integrating it into your course using MemberSpace, you can easily create and add quizzes to your online course. Get started for free today!
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