Game-Based Quizzes with Kahoot

I loved quizzes in my elementary years. It was a chance to prove what I knew to my teacher for easy (if I studied) marks. I especially loved the "mad minutes" in math class where I had a number of multiplication/ division questions to complete in a minute (it took me only a month to get all 50 in a minute, and I am proud of myself to this day). Learning how to use Kahoot! made me wish that I had something like it when I was growing up.

Here is a link to my Kahoot! Quiz:

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/2939fd21-1104-40c4-9c14-45e5c9bd9313

The start of my Kahoot! Quiz, where you can choose to play individual or in teams.

Kahoot! can be played with "player vs. player" or "team vs. team," which can be good for assessing students by themselves or in a group setting. Essentially it is an online quiz with the ability to give out points for right answers, putting students on a scoreboard that the rest of the class can see. Students can choose their own nicknames and a timer is set for students to answer the question before the answer pops up on the board. The teacher can choose to have the questions for points and can take the scoreboard away to prevent any unfriendly competition.

Making the Kahoot! quiz was straight-forward. There were no hiccups or complicated steps to create one. I used content that I learned in our EDPsych class to create this quiz as a review for my peers to use. After my friends took the quiz they described the quiz as a game, and they wanted to be first to answer (to get the most points) but also want to be right (double points).

Even as university students we still want to win when curriculum is gamified. This can be good to use in my classroom as a fun way to get kids to review and learn. I can use Kahoot! as a form of assessment to see who has the ability to read and answer correctly in a given amount of time, or I can use it as an assessment for a new topic to see what kids know about it.

However, I do have concerns with the multiple choice questions. They are not the best way to assess whether students are learning the material. I also have concerns with students just wanting to be the first the answer, and not reading the questions or the answers. If Kahoot! was a more interactive, though-provoking quiz, I would not hesitate to use it at all. For example, if students had the option to answer short-answer questions in teams, it would force them to brainstorm as a group and come to an agreement within the given amount of time. This would be engaging and helpful to students' learning.