Tools: Kahoot

You may sign up at getkahoot.com to create, discover, launch and play games.

What Is Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a free game-based digital learning platform that works on any device with an internet connection. Kahoot! is a student response system to questions that are projected on a overhead and students reply on their smart phone, tablet, or computer. Teachers have the choice to play an already existing game or they can create one that is specific to their content and their students. Kahoot! can be used for any age. There are three different categories on Kahoot intended for slightly different pedagogical application – Quiz, Discussion, and Survey.

1) Quiz – The quiz is the most commonly used format, it assigns a mark out of 1000 based on how fast you answer the question (creating a competitive atmosphere), but this feature can be turned off during the set up. The quizzes also ranks students according to their score and posts the top five in between questions (special note: you never see who is not doing well if there are more than five players). The quiz category can be used for formative assessment, review sessions, or even possibly summative assessment.

2) Discussion – The teacher can enter a single discussion point into Kahoot! and then students can collaboration with others which can stimulate discussion or debate prior to selecting answers.

3) Survey – The survey category has questions with no correct answers and there is no mark component to this. This is a good way for a teacher to do a formative assessment, finding out what students know without the competition aspect of the quiz. Kahoot! allows questions to be a maximum of 95 characters, but there is the option to embed pictures or videos into the questions, permitting the teacher to connect with all areas of the subject’s content. Multiple choice answers can be between 2 and 4 answers and the teacher has the ability to have 1, 2, 3, or 4 of the answers as the correct answer. After the game, the teacher can download the results (into excel or numbers) from the game, which then could be used to follow students progress or compare areas where students struggle. Kahoot! offers many saved quizzes, which can be used as is or edited to meet the teachers requirements, but you can also create and save your own quizzes within Kahoot! Students get to pick their own nicknames, but the teacher is able to boot inappropriate names off the system.

Kahoot! also encourages students to pay attention in class as they have to look up to the front of the class since the questions do not appear on their devices. Kahoot! stimulate collaboration between students and social learning as student are intrigued with what other student think. Kahoot! also allows for students that may not like to answer questions out loud to be still given an opportunity to test themselves. It can also be used with groups to encourage collaboration amongst students.

Kahoot! describes itself as “like a ‘PlayStation for education’, Kahoot! is a game-based educational platform that leaves your students begging for more.”

Technically, Kahoot! is an online questionnaire platform that can be used to introduce a subject, to gather students’ opinions, to present a discussion topic, and to conduct a quick online quiz. It provides three categories of questionnaire: Quiz, Discussion, and Survey. All of them have a topic title and one or many question(s). A Kahoot! question has:

• Question itself that can have up to 95 characters, including spaces and punctuations

• Optional embedded media, either an image or a YouTube video

• 2 to 4 answers with each answer that can have up to 60 characters

The Kahoot! Quiz and the Survey are similar. While a quiz has (a) right answer(s), a survey does not. However, a Kahoot! Discussion allows only one question for your discussion. Participants may join a Kahoot! ‘game’:

• Using a computer or a mobile device, such as a tablet or a smart phone

• Using a web browser or a Kahoot! App

• The 6-digit game pin that is generated automatically when you start a game

• Participant’s alias.

The game will show answers and statistics for each question. And the whole result may be downloaded to the device you started the game.

Where does Kahoot! fit in an educational context?

Kahoot! questionnaires are short; and it is fast to get answers from participants. Kahoot! quizzes use shapes instead of alphabet or numbers as answer item indicators and grants score points based on the speed and correctness to a question, which give participants a gaming feeling and are very hard for them not to engage.

Therefore, it works well when you are trying to introduce a subject and to get some overall idea of where students are at and what they are thinking on the subject matter, after you have given a lecture and would like to have a quick formative assessment, or in the end of a unit you would like to do a quick review. If you want to include a section of a YouTube video as an introduction for your subject, Kahoot! discussion, it allows you to specify the starting seconds and the ending seconds within the video which saves you from a lot of hassles for trying to locate the point where you want to start in the classroom.

Short and fast are the nature of Kahoot!, which are conflicting goals compare with in-depth. To develop in-depth knowledge a teacher need more elaboration. And for students to internalize knowledge, it will take time. Therefore, in contrary to Kahoot’s claim of “providing deep learning”, it promotes quick response and provides quick results. Gaming implicates guessing, gambling, and addicting. The author’s experience with students has proven that students begged for more was true. However, the engagement occurred in a gaming way, where the knowledge itself was not necessary to be the focus. The author had students tried to decoding the pattern of shapes to get the right answer instead of actually read the question. Some students may work hard on the questions and some don’t. The timing factor tends to encouraging guessing rather than thinking. Since it is a game, some students take the winning of the game or highest score as their goal. Both Kahoot! and these game-driven students create a sense of emergency that prevents other students from thinking thoroughly. Here is a link to a trigonometry quiz the author created for reviewing purpose. Students who did actual calculation to get the right answer tended to give up the calculation and to join the guessing bunch. The author also exchanged the experience with several other colleagues, we all concluded that Kahoot! was for quick questions and quick answers.

It also inherits all the characteristics of multiple choice type of quiz or exam with the benefit of knowing the result right away. It can also be misleading since students do guess.

There are a couple of strategies that worth to try when you design answers.

• Avoid any recognizable pattern. It is well known that educators want students to positively enforce student’s knowledge to have “All of above” as the right answer for questions have multiple aspects of an answer. Students automatically check this as the answer whenever they see it. They do not learn anything through this process. You need to set some of these “All of above” questions to have alternative right answers.

• Compose the wrong answers in a way that is the right result from a wrong method. It will reduce the guessing factor since students could not use the strategy of trying several formulas to match a result. They have to know which formula to use to start with.

When use it right, a Kahoot! quiz, discussion or survey may change the dynamics of a lesson and to stimulate learning. Educators just need to remember that there is no magic in learning, and Kahoot! is not an exception.

Kahoot! falls nicely into the TPACK framework. Kahoot can be used for any content and it stimulates discussions, keep students engaged, and depending on the needs to the class, the game can be altered to eliminate the competition aspect of the game. I would personally use this game in many ways. I could access students’ previous knowledge on topics by having a quiz with no points. I could use it as a mid point quiz as a formative assessment or I could use it for a review session. Kahoot! provides students with instant feedback on the questions so student know whether they are prepared for an upcoming test. I feel that Kahoot! can help create an inclusive classroom, as all the students will want to play and students who do poorly are never outcasted as no one knows their score except the teacher after downloading results. Kahoot provides a fun stimulating way to engage students in the content of the course.

*Known issues*/Heads Up

- Student might use inappropriate alias. The facilitator need to click on these offensive aliases and delete them.

- Video playback range does not work on iPad, the video will play from beginning to end instead. So, use a PC or an Android based device to run the game.

- Pressing the back button on your device exits the game. Ensure your students don’t press this mid-game unless they want to restart the app!

- The Facebook/Twitter share score buttons at the end of the game are functioning, but there is a layout issue with each when you press the button.

- To run a Kahoot! an account is required, but players just need a PIN to enter a game. Kahoot is free (and they state it will always be free). -Students are allowed to pick their own nickname, so if the teacher is downloading results they may not know who is who. -Requires Internet connection, if your school wifi is lacking then it may not be a good idea. - Kids tend to really enjoy this game and it tends to take longer than one may anticipate.