Out of the four apps that members of our learning pod researched – Quizizz, Reading Eggs, Sushi Monster and Epic! Books – we have decided to conduct our final evaluation on Quizizz.
We reached this decision by discussing the different advantages and disadvantages of each app in terms of functionality, technicality and pedagogical design, as well as the extent of which Mayer’s multimedia learning principles were able to be followed and applied.
Essentially, Quizizz is a free interactive multimedia application used to create short review games in varying forms such as multiple-choice, checkboxes, fill in the blanks, polls, or open-ended questions. Easily customizable with a high level of teacher and student control, Quizizz gamifies formative assessment using unique features such as class leaderboards and feedback ‘memes’ in a way that is accessible to a wide range of learners. As such, Quizizz works to fulfill a large number of Mayer’s multimedia guidelines, including the feedback, signalling, and segmenting principles.
In particular, a powerful feature that led us to favour Quizizz above the rest of the apps was its ability to indirectly facilitate content creation (beyond teacher curation) through student-submitted questions or by building individual review games. While still practical applications, Reading Eggs, Sushi Monster and Epic! Books remain tools that only support the consumption of pre-designed information and activities and do not offer any additional opportunities to facilitate higher-order thinking skills.
In our group, we plan to dive further into the different ways to integrate Quizizz into classroom learning. Moreover, by evaluating Quizizz from a student perspective, we hope to highlight the many benefits of gamification and collaborative group review, which Quizizz’s platform provides.
Overall, we are looking forward to learning more about this interactive and multimedia learning application and how to implement it effectively into our classroom practice!