Why Use IT Tools for Quizzes and Surveys?

IT tools, especially Web-based ones, simplify the process of creating and delivering quizzes and assessments, and they make it easier and faster for instructors to record and analyze the results of such assessments.

Beyond the basics, online assessments can also be "randomized" to present different students with different sets of questions drawn from some larger pool of questions. They can be timed or untimed, and they can be designed to allow progression through the assessment based on students' responses from question to question (i.e., correctly answer one question, get a harder question next).

Students also benefit from the quick, almost instant, feedback that such online assessments can provide.

How to use Online Quizzes and Surveys:

There are many commercial programs, such as Test Pilot, available to create tests, quizzes, surveys, and similar assessment. Some are specifically designed to produce assessments, while others, like Microsoft's Front Page, are actually more general Web authoring tools with assessment-generating capabilities built in.

Some of these tools are themselves Web-based, while others must be loaded on a local server and accessed throught a networked computer. Some are used just to generate the assessments, which are then delivered separately. Others can be used to both create and deliver the assessments to students.

Web-based course management tools, like WebCT and Blackboard, include more limited -- but still useful -- quiz and survey generators. The results of these assessments can be recorded and managed within the software's own system's for tracking grades.

However, not all instructors will wish to be tied to dedicated quiz/survey software, whether stand alone or bundled with more fully-featured course management tools. Instructors with Web authoring and computer programming experience can easily build their own quiz and/or survey tools, using either so-called client-side or server-side scripts and tools -- many available free or at low cost. For additional details, see Dr. Sunil Hazari's document on web-based assessment.