XplanaZine

Using social networking to develop, deploy, and share online quizzes could be a powerful way to build a knowledge community of students and educators, and to overcome the content limitations and passive learning problems often associated with quizzes.

According to educational psychologists, the problem with most quizzes is that they do not encourage active learning. Further, some test-makers focus on trick questions and they fail to cover all the instructional content. Thus, badly constructed quizzes do not really assess the knowledge they claim to be measuring.

If we reconceptualize that way that we use quizzes, there is a new, powerful paradigm just waiting to be applied to quizzes and quiz banks. If you’re thinking that this might be referring to the collaborative approach that would be found in a wiki, you would be close. What we’re really talking about is the paradigm of social networking which would employ the techniques found in MySpace, LiveJournal, webrings, blogs, iTunes, etc. Basically, we’re talking about anything syndicated with an RSS or Atom feed.

While there are repositories of learning objects that include test banks and quizzes, they do not employ the power of social networking, which includes syndication and the use of user-driven taxonomies (tag clouds or social bookmarks as used in del.icio.us).

This will change, however, as XplanaQuiz (http://www.xplanaquiz.com) takes the lead by creating a place where people can create, collaborate, and share. It is a new site, and will be constantly changing. Here’s how it is described:
XplanaQuiz is a public internet site available for publishing and viewing of assessment-based content. XplanaQuiz allows an educator to easily create and provide access to quizzes/activities. Each quiz has its own permanent URL, and each list is RSS-ready. One of the most important aspects of the site is not the quizzes but how users can access and find the content. Content is categorized by subject (predefined taxonomy), tagged by folksonomy, available via search and creator. For every conceivable topic, XplanaQuiz will possess an abundance of quizzes available for use as supplemental or primary instruction.
There are many benefits for those who choose to participate in the construction of a knowledge community and a social network for quizzes (and other learning objects and instructional material).

Learn to write better tests.
Incorporate Bloom’s Taxonomy (recall, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).
Recalling memorized information.
Construction of schemata.

Encourage students to take the quizzes as practice exams.

Link the question to the concept that is illustrated by a graphic, video, or diagram.

Edit, revise, and share questions.

Link to downloadable e-book chapters.

Link to downloadable audio review.

Contextualize within a story, narrative, or case study.

Situate the quiz with a person’s experience or background.

Encourage critical thinking by using effective techniques.
Premise - Consequence.
Analogy.
Case study.
Incomplete scenario.
Problem / solution evaluation.

The idea of using social networks to share quizzes is exciting. It reflects a commitment to developing programs that acknowledge the behaviors that people really have, rather than trying to impose an alien or awkward one on them. In the end, having dynamic knowledge communities is extremely motivating and affirming to everyone who is involved.

Useful References

Dewey, R. A. (2006) Writing Multiple Choice Items which Require Comprehension. Retrieved from http://www.psywww.com/selfquiz/aboutq.htm on March 6, 2007.

Writing Multiple Choice Questions that Require Critical Thinking. (2006) Retrieved from http://cit.necc.mass.edu/atlt/TestCritThink.htm on March 6, 2007.