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Most educators enter the teaching profession because they want to help students reach their learning goals, not because they really want to create tests and quizzes. Yet every instructor quickly realizes that quizzes are much more than a mandatory part of the job. Each quiz provides a snapshot of a learner’s academic progress, helping teachers better understand which lessons stuck as they create their next lesson plan. Quizzes also open communication between teachers and students and expedite any further assistance learners might need.
While the importance of quizzes cannot be denied, most instructors still don’t want to create or grade them. The good news is that a great quiz maker for instructors can automate the creation of exams, allowing students to show what they know on fair assessments while allowing teachers to focus on other things like writing tips and future lesson plans. A great test generator will also grade quizzes for instructors, providing immediate results as one of its core features.
Unfortunately, instructors are likely to end up with merely an average quiz maker with basic features if they don’t do their research. That’s where we come in. We’re Echo360, a company predicated on leveraging our e3 philosophy of equity, evidence, and engagement to empower students and instructors alike. EchoExam is designed to create assignments, launch classroom assessment questions, and collect real-time responses to evaluate student performance. Moreover, our quiz maker gives teachers the data they need to build on outcomes and create continuous improvement for learners at all levels.
Keep reading to learn more about EchoExam’s features and how the rest of our Echosystem products place students and teachers at the epicenter to help them achieve personalized learning experiences.
Understanding the value provided by a quiz maker begins by acknowledging the role tests and quizzes play in the average classroom. Each instructor is responsible for multiple students, and they frequently don’t have enough time to monitor each learner’s individual progress during class meetings. A chapter test provides valuable insight into student performance at clearly defined benchmarks, helping instructors understand how much learning is taking place.
Since many learning obstacles get worse with time, instructors don’t always have the luxury of waiting for the chapter test to evaluate student performance, however. That’s where quizzes come in handy. Quizzes are generally shorter than tests, meaning that educators don’t need to devote an entire class meeting to them. They also provide insight into each student’s understanding of a particular topic, helping teachers create appropriate lesson plans moving forward. If all of the students are struggling with the causes of the War of 1812, moving on may not be prudent.
Quizzes aren’t the only means of evaluating student performance, but they are the most universal. Some students will raise their hands as soon as they need help, but others might not feel as comfortable doing so due to their personality, relationship with their teachers, or a myriad of other reasons. Homework assignments can provide valuable evidence, but the twin possibilities of parental involvement and students looking up answers mean that it isn’t always reliable. Quizzes allow teachers to measure student progress in a controlled environment where everyone participates and results are reflective of each learner’s abilities. That’s too valuable a tool for teachers to pass up.
Quizzes are an indispensable teaching tool, but writing questions for a quiz is still a time-consuming endeavor. Instructors need to juggle multiple question types, monitor the difficulty of each item, and verify that the content on exams aligns with the material covered in class. These demands become greater if an instructor wants multiple versions of tests to discourage cheating while ensuring all students receive a fair chance to succeed. Of course, teachers have many other responsibilities to take care of as well. Creating quizzes is only a small part of their jobs.
Quiz makers ensure teachers have consistent access to well-written exams without having to sit down and write them. The format allows teachers to recycle questions they like and save tests for future use even if they won’t be administered on a computer. Quiz makers often include question banks sourced from trustworthy publishers too, so teachers don’t need to be concerned about the quality of the items they’re using. Perhaps most importantly, a quiz creator may be able to grade papers and provide prompt results and feedback to both students and teachers that wouldn’t be possible with manual grading.
Choosing the right quiz maker begins by thinking about what features a school or organization needs. For example, a quiz on safety training for a manufacturing employee would be expected to look very different than a quiz on photosynthesis intended for sixth-graders. If a tech company is testing a customer on their latest product release, that’s completely different as well. That said, there are certain features that nearly every educator will want. We’ve highlighted four of the most important below:
The primary purpose of a quiz maker is writing quizzes, so you want to look for software with lots of questions to choose from. EchoExam includes over 15,600 assessment questions aligned with federal Common Core standards for K-12 students, content distributed by 90+ leading publishers for over 13,000 textbook titles, and even industry-specific questions in fields such as healthcare, nursing, hospitality, higher ed, and the skilled trades. Sample partners include the National Restaurant Association, National Geographic Learning, Savvas Learning Company, McGraw-Hill, and Clairmont Press.
Similarly, you want a variety of question types for more control over the difficulty of each quiz. For instance, students can often guess the correct answer on a multiple-choice test by finding clues in the question, but it’s much harder to do that with an essay prompt. EchoExam supports more than 14 question types including short answers, essays, numeric response, multiple-choice, multiple-response, matching, true or false, sentence completions, and more. Each has a unique purpose that shouldn’t be neglected when you create a quiz.
Furthermore, many items in the EchoExam question bank include bimodal functionality, allowing teachers to toggle between multiple-choice and short-answer questions to immediately adjust the difficulty of a quiz on the fly. Dynamic content capabilities work similarly, allowing instructors to generate multiple questions to test the same concept. All told, there are over 300,000 free starter questions included in EchoExam before instructors write anything themselves. And yes, instructors can create their own questions as well!
A robust item bank is a great start, but it won’t make much of a difference in the classroom if technology prevents teachers from accessing it. Fortunately, this is never an issue with EchoExam. For instance, the included Test Manager provides all of the features instructors may need to create rosters, create tests, and administer tests and quizzes in a variety of formats. You can easily create, modify, add, and delete questions as needs change. You can also launch exam questions automatically and get instant results through seamless integration with LMS (learning management system) solutions.
The quizzes you create can be printed, published online, or exported to another program, giving instructors complete control over how exams are administered. This flexible quiz administration meets learner needs while adapting to any tech constraints with aplomb. For example, an online quiz isn’t a good option for a student who lacks internet access. EchoExam provides the flexibility instructors need to give that student a paper quiz even if the rest of the class is working online, promoting equity in the test-taking process.
Quizzes are accessible on any device including mobile options such as smartphones and tablets, allowing students to choose a machine they feel comfortable with. Taking a digital quiz may also help alleviate any anxiety students may be feeling on exam day.
Results are the reason behind any quiz, and the best quiz makers include analytical tools so you can view each student’s score. EchoExam includes tracking tools so you can tell at a glance which content areas are solid and where reinforcement might be needed. You can also generate valuable reports to help you track the performance of individual students and entire classes with ease. Alternatively, you can simply monitor results in your preferred LMS. Teachers can even share results with test-takers immediately or wait depending on the situation. For example, telling a student they missed number 1 could cause them to second-guess themselves on number 2 and lead to a downward spiral.
If you want even more analytical tools, the rest of the Echosystem has you covered. With EchoPoll, instructors can collect and analyze student responses to poll questions in the middle of class with data visualization tools to make the data easier to interpret quickly. Instructors can also divide students into teams for a trivia quiz that’s great for reviewing key concepts and conducting formative assessments before final exams.
Similarly, EchoPoll gives teachers a dedicated dashboard showing them how all of their students are faring across multiple classes. Instructors can enroll learners in remedial courses by email address via an intuitive drag-and-drop interface or assign homework based on quiz performance. EchoPoll also allows students to play games and earn points and badges, making learning more fun.
Should instructors want to know how much students are getting out of video presentations, EchoVideo is the solution. EchoVideo allows a test maker to embed questions directly into video content, instantly revealing who is paying attention while preventing laggards from completing an assignment.
A quiz maker can be used to create formative assessments, but it doesn’t have to be limited to tests and quizzes. Instructors and institutions trust EchoExam to create study and training guides as well, allowing learners to practice with questions from the same source as the items they’ll see on exam or certification day. This often promotes better engagement as learners understand that assignments have a strong correlation with what they’ll be tested on.
Preparing review materials can be just as time-consuming as creating quizzes too, so it’s only natural that instructors would rely on their quiz maker to speed things up. Taking shortcuts like this wouldn’t be advisable if the result hindered students, but fortunately, instructors can trust all of the questions in the EchoExam bank.
One of the biggest pitfalls associated with writing quiz questions is how to ensure equity for all test-takers. If you give every student the same quiz, you’re inviting students to cheat. If you prepare different quizzes for each learner, keeping the difficulty balanced can prove impossible. This is especially true if some test-takers have learning differences or sensory impairments that force them to use tech differently than their peers.
EchoExam tackles both of these issues head-on. Instructors can use our quiz maker to automatically generate up to 26 versions of a test, ensuring that every student receives an exam of comparable difficulty without resorting to the exact same questions. Likewise, the test administration features described above can accommodate any test-takers with special needs such as additional time or typing responses. It’s easy to confuse grades with the educational process, but EchoExam was created with the understanding that tests and quizzes are educational tools more than goals.
While assessments are serious business, EchoExam makes quizzes “relatively” fun because it streamlines how instructors create quizzes. Instructors get thousands of questions to choose from in a multitude of question types, are free to create new items, and can easily publish and administer tests. Educators also get immediate access to results and can share that info with students whenever they wish. Best of all, you don’t need to deal with a cumbersome interface or limit yourself to digital formats to take full advantage of these features when preparing a quiz.
EchoExam becomes an even more effective test maker when combined with other Echosystem tools, like EchoPoll to survey students and EchoVideo to optimize the use of video as a classroom tool. All Echo360 are architected and deployed to drive superior educational outcomes.
If you’re an instructor worrying about how you’ll create your next quiz, a school administrator looking for additional evidence of classroom performance, or a CEO interested in verifying compliance training, EchoExam will pass your test. Please request more information today if you’d like to learn more about the features of EchoExam and the rest of the Echosystem.
Instructors, administrators, and learners everywhere can now experience the most comprehensive suite of learning engagement, assessment, and authoring solutions.
Let’s talk more to find the right solution for you.
Instructors, administrators, and learners everywhere can now experience the most comprehensive suite of learning engagement, assessment, and authoring solutions.
Let’s talk more to find the right solution for you.
Effortlessly create assignments, launch assessment questions and collect real-time responses to evaluate performance. Build on outcomes to create continuous improvement with learners at all levels.
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With over 14 different question types, you can match the assessment to the material at hand. Use traditional test question types such as true/false, multiple-choice, multiple response, numeric response, matching, completion, short answer and essay to review, re-teach and reinforce learning.
Ensuring that learners understand the information presented and how it can impact their success is key. Assess, track and analyze learner performance. Get results immediately and view valuable reports at the individual level, or for the class or group as a whole. Provide results in real-time, or at a later time as preferred.
With dynamic content, generate multiple iterations of exam questions to test the same concept. Use bimodal to toggle between multiple-choice and short answer question types, immediately changing the item difficulty level.
To learn more about how Echo360’s Echosystem can help you conduct more interactive lectures that truly engage each student’s attention, contact us today. We’re excited to share all the features of the Echosystem that can help.
Echo360 is driven to enable inspired learning experiences for everyone, anywhere through the high quality of solutions, tools, and standards we set for our work and ourselves.
Ensuring our solutions and tools are effective in all kinds of learning environments.
Unleashing the end-to-end learning potential of video, from creation to administration.
Designing and delivering effective engagement tools that produce results.
Providing empirical evidence of engagement, progress, and opportunity areas through easy-to-use dashboards.
Integrating seamlessly with the most widely used Learning Management Systems in education and business.
Echo360 delivers an innovative model for engaged learning in the post-Covid age. We offer coherent and compelling learner-centered experiences regardless of place and time, so all learners have the opportunities to learn.
