Digital formative assessment tools enhance learning and encourage students to be active in class. However, when each tool requires a separate login and installation, it might complicate and interrupt the flow of class activities. Some tools are also more suitable in certain contexts, for instance, the teacher might be looking for a tool that suits self-paced practice in place of a competitive quiz.

Teacher David Ruiz prepares quizzes to formatively assess the progress of his students for almost any subject he teaches. The quizzes are not for grading, but to track students’ level of understanding. He can decide to modify any aspect of the class by quickly checking the results.

There are many apps to create quizzes: Kahoot!, Quizlet, Socrative, but his favourite is Quizizz. Among all the digital tools David uses in the classroom, he finds this the most practical, and timesaving. It frees up time for him to monitor and plan his teaching. The amount of individual and class data offered by the reports is very valuable for a complete formative assessment. In addition, they are stored and organised on the same page. 

Some other features:

• The data can be downloaded or deleted at the students’ request.
• You can create a set of “memes” or custom cartoons that appear after each correct (or incorrect) response given by the participants (Figure 1).
• You can include images, both in the question and in the possible answers, which allows you to adapt a little better to the diversity of the class.
• You can send the results to the students or parents in .pdf format.
• It is possible to remove the time limit for answers. Many students get nervous when they must answer quickly and perform worse than they would do otherwise.
• You can organise the questionnaires into collections, making it easier to find them.

Figure 1 Some of the avatars that David uses in his quiz feedback messages

The teacher uses an avatar, which can help students connect with the teacher more easily, especially in an online setting.  He also uses memes in the quiz feedback, making references to popular culture elements that students love. 

Other times students do the quizzes in teams, within a gamified project: The Kantic@ School of Magic (Figure 2). The visual concept is based on Harry Potter and the Hogwarts School of Magic, which makes the competition very appealing. David and his colleagues carry out the competition throughout the course. 
With the results of each quiz they earn points for their “house” (team) in “The House Cup”. Teacher David also uses ClassDojo to give points to individual students for their good behaviour and achievements.

In other lessons, the students themselves (usually as a team) choose and create the questions of the quizzes on the topics they are working on. 

Individual quizzes can help detect weaknesses in specific subjects (Figure 3). David not only adapts the questions based on knowledge level but also to special needs, making the class more inclusive. Students with special needs can take the test at the same time as their classmates with different questions or characteristics, such as more time to respond, images in the answers, fewer questions or fewer answer options, according to their curricular adaptation. This way, they do not have the feeling of doing a different test compared to their peers.

Figure 2 The School of Magic homepage. The website has classroom announcements and information on the rules of the House Cup competition and links to quizzes and activities.

When a concept or skill is perfectly mastered by the class, teacher David adds activities of higher difficulty and some more elaborated activities related to that concept. If a content has not been sufficiently understood by the class in general (or by some student in general), he proposes reinforcement activities, new explanations by other channels (videos, mental maps, explanations by other professionals, etc.). Sometimes he asks other students to help their peers, which is a good way to increase collaboration and student agency.

Figure 3 An example question about the solar system from Quizizz, and a report generated by Quizizz.

This scenario could be implemented online as well as in hybrid and blended contexts. In this case, it is recommended to use the quizzes in the homework assignment mode so that students can complete the quizzes at their own pace. The teacher has access to student results and can easily personalise student learning based on student performance. Live quizzes can also be played in any of these settings if students have good bandwidth and internet access.