One thing instructors frequently mention is a lack of student engagement in their classes. Or, they’re looking for ways to increase interaction with and between students.
Maybe instead, you’re looking for a way to “check in” with your students during a long lecture and check their understanding; or, you just want to break up the monotony of a 3-hour lecture (as much for yourself as for your students). Or maybe you just want to liven things up in your course and help students relax a little before a stressful exam.
AND, what if on top of all that, you’re looking for a tool that’s not only easy to use, by free?
Well, there are lots of ways you can do any or all of those things and you’ve probably heard of a number of classroom response systems that can help you:
Unfortunately, while all these tools are easy enough to use and can even be fun for your students, none of them are FREE.
However, Kahoot! is.
Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn – any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages!
Source: Making Learning Awesome! – Kahoot!
And in this article, and the short videos below, we’ll explore how easy it is to get started and then, how you can take your Kahoots to the next level. Also, it’s totally free? Kahoot! was originally created for K-12 classrooms as a way to bring game-based learning to the classroom and make learning not only more effective but also more fun.
And, over the last several years, as it’s popularity has grown, it’s also found its way onto many college and university campuses as well where it’s being used for everything from simple games to break up monotonous lectures to formative assessment tools for every topic you can imagine.
You can even use quizzes, polls, and games that other people have created or share your own.
Getting started with Kahoot begins with creating an account. Then, you can start creating your own quizzes, polls, or discussions with as many questions as you like.
To learn more, check out these short videos:
Create Your Account
Create Your First Quiz
Preview Your Quiz
Just in case you didn’t watch all the videos, it’s important to keep in mind that Kahoot does have some limitations.
For example, it does not allow for more than four options on multiple choice questions… and though it does allow for there to be more than one correct answer, students can only select one answer per question. So, for those NCLEX practice questions, you might have to get a bit creative.
You’re also limited to 95 characters for your quiz questions; so, you’ll likely have to edit longer questions. But if you can simplify your questions a bit, it’s a great easy tool to liven things up in class.
Also, did I mention it’s free!!!
Your students can also use it to create quizzes for each other and this would be a great way for you to assess them and for them to give each other feedback.
To take a deeper dive, here are some additional resources:
Kahoot! as formative assessment
I do, we do, you do – Kahoot in Higher Ed
Explicit teaching (aka. Direct instruction)
And if you’d like to know how to go beyond the basics with Kahoot, check out the next blog post.
Finally, if you have any questions or you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 training session to learn more about Kahoot or anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
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