Quizizz: My favorite way to engage students in a gamified and fun quiz game

I’m a big fan of gamification in the classroom. I’m always looking for new ways to engage my students in safe but competitive areas so that they can flex their brain muscles. About a year ago I started using Quizizz and I haven’t looked back.

What is it?

Many educators are familiar with Kahoot! I like Kahoot! but my real problem with it is that all of the students need to be able to see the board and they have to go at the same pace. Quizizz is different in that it allows students to work from their device only and they are able to go at their own pace. The gamified component is there as well and students get live ranking updates.

Creating a Quizizz

Once you sign-up for a free account you are able to create a quiz via the menu bar at the top. You will be asked to give the quiz an image, set the name of the quiz, and set it as public or private.

After that, you will be taken to a page where you can enter in questions and answers.

You will be able to see a preview of the question on the right-hand side. You can include images in your question or just leave it as plain text. You also need to select a correct answer out of the answer choices you provided.

One of the other great features of Quizizz is that there is a searchable database of all of the public Quizizz’s out there. You can search by keyword and find loads of other quizzes with questions that you can place directly onto your quiz.

When you view public quizzes you are able to hit the red plus button and they will show up on your question list on the left. You can edit the questions later if you wish as well.

Once you are done with your quiz, hit the green “Finish” button on the top right of the page. You will then be given the chance to play/start a game or return back to your Quizizz dashboard.

Playing quizizz

When you are ready to start you hit the “Play Live!” button to begin. You will be taken to a page that gives you a few options on how to have students join the game. You can give them a web address along with a 6-digit code or you can set it as an assignment, announcement, or question in Google Classroom.

Once students start entering the game you will see their username and avatar show up. Once all of your students have entered, you can begin the game. Students may enter the game after it has started because Quizizz is based on student pacing, not class pacing. As students start answering questions, you will get live feedback on the numbers of correct and incorrect answers.

Checking for student understanding

Once students have completed the game they are able to review their answers. Once the teacher decides that the game is over they can end the game and get feedback on individual students or the class as a whole.

Individual feedback is shown in a grid pattern. Green checks are given for correct answers and red X’s are for incorrect answers. I usually try to group particular content questions together so that I can see if a student truly understood what was taking place or not. In the game settings, you can allow question order to be shuffled, but the results will always show in the original order.

You can also get a class view of each question to get a sense of how the class did on particular content questions. I use this as a way to check for understanding, question-wording, and to get suggestions from my students.

As you can see in the questions above, question #4 was overwhelming understood by the students, but question #5 proved to be an area of concern. This type of feedback allows me to go back and reteach items that were not properly understood and allows me to ask questions of my students to find out exactly what they didn’t understand.

As I said before, I’m a big fan of Quizizz. Not only does it allow me to get quick informal feedback on my students, it’s fun for them, and allows me to really check for their understanding. It also helps me quickly catch common problem areas and address them before they become bigger problems.


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4 responses to “Quizizz: My favorite way to engage students in a gamified and fun quiz game”

  1. Ron Francis Avatar

    Great review of Quizizz! I love using it in homework mode for student self-paced review.

    1. Nathan Nagele Avatar

      I agree. I didn’t talk about homework mode in the review, but it’s another great feature of Quizizz.

  2. Abderrahim Mimouni Avatar
    Abderrahim Mimouni

    How can we help students with some reflective questions after they complete the quiz?

    1. Nathan Nagele Avatar

      I have a few ways that I do this with my students. I first have them review the questions that they got wrong. They can view the questions they got incorrect at the end of the quiz under their ranking. Secondly, I have them come up with a new question for the quiz that covers the same material as the one they got wrong, and then they provide me with the correct answer and a description of why it is correct.

      This way I can build a better set of questions and I can also see what they get and what they don’t. If there is a particular area that they are having trouble I will go back and reteach that area or provide resources for them.

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