Liven up eLearning course to engage learners with funny quiz

Making good eLearning courses is a developing art. As a trainer, your goal is to make the training memorable. As you design the course, you must design not only the "what" (or content), but also the "how" (the delivery mechanisms). Integrating funny quiz (like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire") into eLearning course is an easy way to capture the attention of learners and make your course memorable. Learners will interact with key concepts for your course quickly.

A funny quiz can energize almost any content and produce powerful new understanding for your learners. Funny quiz promote learning – more than revive tension, it creates opportunities for the learners to "interact" with the quiz so as to demonstrate learners' understanding of the course. Many benefits would funny quiz holds to course:

• Funny quiz entertains learners with a purpose


• Funny quiz gives learners valuable feedback


• Funny quiz gives trainers feedback


• Funny quiz motivates learners


• Funny quiz accelerates learning process

So then, there comes into the question: how to integrate the right funny quiz into your course? Let's take a look at these following steps.

Step 1 - Identify your course objective.

What objective you want your course to achieve after training, please take careful consideration. Specifically, what skills and knowledge do you want your learners take from your course. Then think about it how the funny quiz will help the learners meet the course objective.

Step 2 - make course plan

After determining the objective, what you should do is making the lesson plan according to the course objective. Analyze and list the task you wish to cover in your course plan. Supposing you are going to explain the details about H1N1 flu in one course, you list would look something like this:

course objective for swine flu knowledge: learners will be able to master the details about H1N1 flu.

• List what is H1N1 flu.


• List the Signs and symptoms about H1N1 flu.


• Describe how to prevent H1N1 flu.

From this list you will develop a set of task that to achieve your course objective. The next step is crux to import funny quiz to your lesson and enhance your course.

Step 3 - choose the funny quiz for your lesson plan

The right funny quiz make a difference in motivate learners. Here are some criteria to select a right funny quiz:

• Corresponding with the major lesson objective


• Create an opportunity to practice skills


• Challenge the learners intellectually

So, follow the criteria to select the right funny quiz. This will do as a Catalyst to help learners master the major point of your course.

Step 4 - Create funny quiz for your course

After choosing the right funny quiz, the following step is creating the funny quiz with the questions you have prepared. Which quiz tool you should choose? Quiz in Flash format instead of plain text quiz would really attract learners' attention, especially for eLearning course. Luckily, some quiz tool could help you create great-looking flash quizzes in minutes without programming skills, such as QuizCreator.

Step 5 - place the funny quiz in your course

Where the funny quiz should be in your course is also important. Generally, placing a funny quiz at the beginning of your course is a good way to take learners into your course. This starter quiz can establish a comfortable environment for learner. Learners will quickly access to the role of the course. On the other hand, you could integrate some outstanding questions into the funny quiz, these questions will cause learners to seek the solution in the course consciously.

The end of the course is a prime time to place the funny quiz. You can add some questions corresponding to the starter funny quiz. This will help you test whether the learners acquire the knowledge or not. If they acquire it, you could advance to the next lesson, and learners will have the feeling of success and they want to learn more. If don't, you could direct the learners to review the course.

Design eLearning course and apply funny quizzes to your eLearning courses. Funny quizzes make your courses better and help you be more productive.

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My favorite eLearning tools

As you work online you become dependent on certain e-learning tools. Here's my favorite list of tools I've come to depend on. What about your favoriate tools?

Favorite Quiz Maker -QuizCreator

QuizCreator is a powerful assessment tool that you can create Flash online exam, quiz, test and survey. It combines interactivity and multimedia to engage learners through the learning process and offers flexible results tracking and score reporting.

Favorite courseware tool -Articulate Presenter

Articulate lets me create high-impact Flash presentations and eLearning courses from PowerPoint with rich media. My course could run on any Web server, any LMS.

Favorite screen recorder - Camtasia studio

Camtasia is what I use for creating interactive content. It's a great tool to capture computer screen. The latest version is 6.0, I could add simple quiz to the content, I like it very much.

Favorite LMS - Moodle In my view, Moodle is changing the face of the e-learning industry. It is an open source product which has come of age. It is a simple and quick way to get a blog up and running. Simply the best virtual learning environment and no licence fees!

Favorite virtual classroom tool - Dimdim

I have been playing with DimDim these days, and I am impressed with the open source virtual classroom tool. Though it does not yet have the full features of many of the commercial alternatives it allows you to run virtual classrooms and the voice over IP is better than most I have used.

Favorite blog tool - Wordpress
I use both the Blogger and WordPress platforms. I like Wordpress, and I also host my blog on it, which is still a primary tool for my personal learning even when I'm not posting as regularly. I will update regularly in the future. :-)

Favorite RSS tool - iGoogle

iGoogle lets me Keep pace with information happening everywhere. It is my first choice remains RSS feeds. My RSS feeds are set up using iGoogle – my Google home page but you can use any number of readers (Feeddemo and so on). I love it because I can set up RSS feeds for news and issues I want to track.

Favorite social bookmarking - delicious

It is the tool I use to collect all the interesting sites I find through Google Reader and elsewhere. Being able to highlight, keep cached copies of the pages, and post to my blog automatically makes it much more valuable for me than just bookmarking.

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How to Make a Flash Quiz Yourself

Many of us would want to make a quiz for our website or blog. Especially for many bloggers, add quiz to blog is a nice way to attract more visitors to blog. For teachers, a quiz is good assessment tool to test students' knowledge of learned course. So then, do you know how to make a quiz? You might and you might not, answer truthfully and find out. If not, you could continue to read this tutorial to learn how to make it.

### Step 1 - Prepare questions
First, think about which topic you make the quiz for. Make a list of all questions you want to include in this Flash quiz. Be creative. Challenge others with good questions. Are you ready to make a quiz for your challenging questions? Then, go to the next
step.


### Step 2 - Choose the right way to make a quiz
Many ways could help you do this work. If you only want to make a simple quiz without multimedia objects or complex question type, you could choose some free online service to make a quiz, such as http://www.quizyourfriends.com/.

If you want to make a quiz with multimedia objects, some Flash quiz maker could do this work, it is the easiest yet quickest way to make a multimedia quiz. Here are the following steps to make a quiz with QuizCreator.

Download and install QuizCreator

Add prepared questions to quiz
You could add as much as 9 question types (True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Select, Fill the Blank, Matching, Sequence, Click Map, Short Essay
and Word Bank ) with QuizCreator.

Customize Flash quiz

Add image, Screenshots, Flash, and music to enrich your quiz.




Besides, you also could make intro page for the whole quiz, set time limit, and customize feedback for each questions.

Publish the quiz

Click the publish button, you could publish your quiz to webpage, Word, Excel or LMS, just do it according to your needs. What's more, you also could track the quiz results via E-mail, Web database, and free online reporting system - QMS.

### Step 3 - Host your quiz online
Now, only one thing left is putting your quiz on website or blog, tell your friends or students to take the quiz you make and view the quiz results.

That's it! Simple as can be, right? Right. So now you know how to make a Flash quiz by yourself, what the hell are you waiting for? Get started to make a quiz for you with QuizCreator!

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Top 6 Quiz Makers - Choose The Right One For You

There are tons of quiz makers on the market, search it on Google, you will find more. Most of them are online quiz makers, now I choose some popular desktop quiz makers, and list some useful data for each quiz makers. Hope this information could give you some direction to when choose the right quiz maker to create Flash quiz....

Wondershare QuizCreator

Wondershare QuizCreator is a robust solution designed for teachers, testers, researchers and evaluators to create flash-baesd quizzes, online surveys and web assessments. This is one of the easy yet effective ways to access knowledge and get valuable opinions.

Price: $129.95
Question Type: 9 question types. Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Word Bank, Hot spot, and Short Essay.
Hot features:
Integrate images, Flash and audio into the quiz.
Randomize questions and set Time Limit.
Track quiz results free with online quiz results tracking system.
7 major math and science symbols supported.
Publish for Flash, Word, Excel, QMS, CD and SCORM packages.
Recommended index: 5 Stars

Question Writer

Question Writer is a quiz authoring tool for Microsoft Windows. It is used for authoring questions and compiling them into quizzes in the Flash file format.
Price: Std: $195, Pro: $395.
Question Type: 8 question types. Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Matching, Sequencing, Fill in the Blank, Essay, True/False, and Partial Credit.
Hot features:
Multiple languages supported.
20 quiz themes.
Randomize questions and set time limit.
Integrate images, Flash and audio into the quiz.
Publish for Flash and SCORM packages.
Recommend index: 4 Stars

Articulate QuizMaker

Articulate Quizmaker gives you unprecedented power and freedom in a new streamlined interface. Whether you're a new or seasoned quiz creator, you'll easily create professional, custom Flash quizzes and surveys.
Price: $699.95
Question Type: 8. Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Hot spot, and Word Bank.
Hot features:
PowerPoint-like interface.
Integrate images, Flash and audio into the quiz.
Randomize questions and set Time Limit.
Hassle-free question pooling.
Professional, customizable themes.
Publish for Flash, Word, Articulate Online, CD and SCORM packages.
Recommend index: 5 Stars

Tanida Quiz Builder

Quiz Builder provides an easy-to-use interface to design the quiz and does not require any Flash or programming knowledge. You can customize several aspects of the quiz appearance, add images to decorate the questions and preview the quiz at any time.
Price: $99
Question Type: 8 question types. Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Word Bank, and Hot spot.
Hot features:
Randomize questions and set time limit.
Publish for Flash, Word, and CD.
Recommend index: 3 Stars

Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is an electronic learning tool which can be used to author software demonstrations, software simulations, and randomized quizzes in .swf format. It contains advanced quizzing functionality that makes it easy to create your own robust quizzes and assessments.
Price: $799
Question Type: 6. Multiple choices, Short answer, Fill-in-the-blank, True/False, Matching, Hot spot, sequence
Hot features:
Capture and record screen activity and effortlessly synchronize audio and video.
Develop and deploy engaging computer simulations and skill assessments.
Rapidly develop soft-skills training with complex branching scenarios.
Create informal learning content such as podcasts and screencasts.
Recommend index: 5 Stars

ViewletQuiz

ViewletQuiz enables the most sophisticated, fun and interactive quiz or survey you could possibly imagine. With ViewletQuiz, you can truly create your own “style”. You have full control of the timing of objects and can have them appear and disappear as you like.
Price: $299
Question Type: Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Hot spot, short answer, and Lickert.
Hot features:
Create Flash-based quiz and survey.
Randomize questions and set time limit.
Integrate images, Flash, and audio into the quiz.
Publish for Flash and SCORM packages.
Recommend index: 5 Stars

Frankly, I really like Articulate QuizMaker, the second is Wondershare QuizCreator. Adobe Captivate is definitely a good screen recorder, if you don't want the screen capture function, there is no need to choose this tool. However, for the point of price, I will choose QuizCreator, what is your choice? Take a look at these test makers and try these. Choose the right test maker for you.
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Two drawing tools you could use in your elearning courses

Tom Kuhlmann wrote a post about telling stories visually in e-learning courses rather than making them information heavy. He demos LectureScribe, a free tool for capturing whiteboard lectures. He notes that LectureScribe outputs to Flash so you can insert it into your e-learning course if the authoring tool you use supports that. Tom works for Articulate, a rapid e-learning development tool, so his demo uses that product. Do you have a situation where a whiteboard demo would make sense? If so, you might want to check it out.

And, speaking of drawing, Wesley Fryer notes that Google had added vector drawing capability to Google docs. From Google's blog

…create drawings using lines, free hand scribbles, text labels and a large
choice of shapes that you can move, resize, rotate and adjust. Group, order,
align and distribute and other features are available when you select objects
you’ve drawn. You can also customize a range of shape properties, from line
widths to fill color, and from arrowheads to font size, and much more. If you
change your mind, there is undo and redo. You can collaborate with a friend or
colleague on a drawing, or work alone, just as you can in Google Docs today.

Seems this also has some potential use for elearning. Looking at existing free tools you can use with your current e-learning authoring tool(s) is just one way to expand your options. (JC)

Originated from: http://www.brandon-hall.com/workplacelearningtoday/?p=4045
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