Quiz as an Effecting Teaching, Learning and Assessment Tool

As necessary as ongoing assessment is for both teachers and students, many teachers complain that constant testing stifles their creativity and destroys student interest, at a time when motivation is mandatory for the current crop of media-saturated students. So, how can teachers assess student learning and evaluate the quality of their own teaching, without losing the interest of their students?[1] (Romo).

It is not a question without an answer. The answer is plain, simple and straightforward. Use Quiz!

It helps to ensure that students understand what you are teaching and -- when they don’t -- to understand where your teaching has missed the mark. (Romo).
Moreover, it helps students to check their progress and assess their need to pay attention in classroom discussions.

Here are some interesting outcome of our experiment of ‘Using Quiz for Teaching’:

·        Students identified and rated following benefits of using Quiz in teaching:
o   It helps to do follow-up reading, everyday, after face-2-face classroom discussion
o   It helps in increased concentration in classroom interaction
o   It improves reading habits as they read with specific purpose to find specific information.
o   It cultivates the habit of taking running notes while the face-2-face classroom interaction is going on.

As students voted for Unit-End-Quiz, we have put it in practice rather than daily or weekly quizzes

It is observed that ‘this approach encourages collaborative learning and creates a sense of community among the students. It also gets students coming to class prepared, and I think it makes the quizzes a more positive and useful learning experience’[2]. (Deterding)

Here are the links to visit the quiz pages:

1. Quiz on 'The Background Reading: The Renaissance English Literature'
2. Quiz on Criticism, Plato's Objection and Aristotle's Poetics
3. Quiz on Sir Philip Sidney and John Dryden
4. Quiz on The Twentieth Century Literature
5. Quiz on T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land'
6. Quiz on Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse'
7. Quiz on Mathew Arnold's 'The Study of Poetry.

Works Cited:

Deterding, Audrey. A New Kind of “Space” for Quizzes. 26 Jan 2012. 24 July 2014 <http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/a-new-kind-of-space-for-quizzes/>.

Romo, Sandra. Using Quizzes to Measure Teaching Effectiveness: How Do You Measure Up? 8 Aug 2010. 24 July 2014 <http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev/profdev180.shtml>.
  

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[1] See more at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev/profdev180.shtml#sthash.5QLlTkk4.dpuf[2] Reprinted from Deterding, A. (2010) A New Kind of “Space” for Quizzes. The Teaching Professor, 24 (9), 6. - See more at: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/a-new-kind-of-space-for-quizzes/#sthash.2dahP19J.dpuf