There's no doubt about it. Quizzes help keep students focused and can be an excellent way for teachers to monitor student progress. Quizzes may also be a good tool for evaluating prospective employees. But they can be difficult to manage. Once again the computer comes to the rescue. We review two computer-based quiz software packages. As always, check out these programs and the competition before making any purchase decisions.
Create Free Quiz is software that runs on Microsoft Windows computers. This program supports multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank style tests. Students can answer quiz questions on the computer or on paper. The teacher has the option of printing out the solutions as well as the questions. There are dozens of configuration options such as setting a quiz time limit or minimum number of answers supplied by a student before exiting the program.
Few teachers have the time to create detailed progress charts for their students unless they are using a program such as this one. It's also possible for teachers to review the group's success rate for individual questions. Doing so manually is cumbersome which means that poorly worded or misleading questions reappear semester after semester unless the teachers use software to statistics and update the questions. Create A Quiz users can spice up their questions with graphics images (BMP, GIF, JPG formats), Windows Help files (HLP/CHM formats), WAV sound files, and AVI multimedia files.
This software comes in two versions, the Teacher Version and the Student Version. You must purchase each in order to use this software. The company sells a Publisher's License that allows you, under certain restrictions, to distribute and sell your quizzes packaged with the Student Version. So your quizzes can potentially be a money maker for your educational institution. The company offers a web hosting solution which allows you to upload the quizzes to their web site. The product suite also includes Quiz Script Creator that generates quizzes written in Javascript. You can run these quizzes from your hard drive or from any Internet browser, even if you don't have a live Internet connection.
For a more upscale solution take a look at Articulate Quizmaker '09 which creates custom Flash quizzes and surveys. Here are some of this software's advanced features: Ability to group and randomize questions, while keeping related questions together on demand; Branching quiz takers to different slides depending on their answers; and Multi-screen scenarios. This product offers twenty different types of questions. It allows you to produce and modify professional looking quizzes, surveys, and assessments rapidly.
Create a Quiz and Articulate Quizmaker '09 are two of many competitive products. As always, before making any commitment determine your specific needs and download and play with the appropriate evaluation editions. Make sure that you read the licensing agreements carefully. These or competitive products can really improve your quizzing capacity, but you must make sure that you purchased the right software for your educational institution.
Post Source: EzineArticles
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