A test-type exam to check if your students are learning what are you seeing of a subject in class can be most boring for the student and one more pile of work to correct the teacher … but if you turn it into something fun where the game and competition come first, they will have fun and learn more easily. You will in this post how to create and play Kahoot step by step.
For this the Kahoot platform is easy to use and fun for the teacher and students; On this platform, we can create “mini-contests” and create test questions and 4 possible answers to see the learning of our minis.
Kahoot is a free online platform and has two websites for its use, on the one hand, getKahoot! which is the platform that the teacher will use to create their tests and on the other hand Kahoot.it where students will access to follow the test.
Create Kahoot
The first thing is to access and register on the getKahoot platform and register by filling in the fields required for it. Once the registration is complete, you can now access your main panel and search among the thousands of Kahoot created and shared by other people, or create your own.
To create a new one, you must click on Quiz, and you will directly access the main page of the creation of your new test, where you must select a title, language, description of the topic and you can attach the main image for this test and a video (it can be used as a pill to review the important points of the topic on which you develop the test). Also on this first screen, you can select visibility (if you want to share it with the Kahoot community or just private for yourself).
Once the title is completed, you can start designing the questions; you can ask as many as you require for the topic. For each question it will ask you:
- Question title
- If you want to add a time limit to the answers
- Points summer for the question (helps the competition mode)
- Image or mini-video about each of the questions
- And four possible answers (one true and three false
Once the question is created, you have to select by means of the “tic” which is the correct answer and press the Next button to go to the next one. When you have finished creating all the questions you need, save the “Save” changes, and you will have created your first test for the theme’s super contest.
From your main panel, you can access your created Kahoot, and simply by pressing the “Play” button, your students can participate in the test.
You must project the Play screen onto the board, and your students will be able to access the game (PC, tablet or smartphone) from any type of device by accessing the Kahoot.it website and selecting the code that you project on your game.
When the teacher clicks on “Play” on their Kahoot, the following screen will appear to choose the game mode (the “Classic” individual mode will be used to check the learning status of all the students one by one) and will display a code that is the one that students enter in the device to access the test.
When they agree, it will ask them for a name that will serve to see the response time to respond and the percentage of successes and failures of each one. When you see all registered on-screen press “Start”, and the game begins.
Once started, the questions will appear with four possible answers differentiated by four different colors, in addition to the time to answer (if you have set a time limit), they will only have the four colors on their screens, and they will simply have to click on the color of the correct answer, to be able to continue. After the presentation time, the number of hits and misses of the question and a ranking of the players with positions for correct answers and speed of response appear on the teacher’s screen (projector).
At the end, you can see the results of each student on your main screen, and they can assess the test and make comments.
5 Tricks to Increase the Quality of your Kahoot Games
Here we have put some tips that can improve the quality of your Kahoots.
Add Images or Videos
Adding images or videos increases motivation and complements the text of the questions. In addition, we can take advantage of videos and images to create different challenges:
- What is behind the image? We have an image that is being discovered, and you have to guess what it is about before the others. It makes the students have to visualize the complete answer before seeing it.
- What is the error in the image? They present an image that has an error (a mathematical problem, a technical execution, etc.), and they have to select the error found in the photo.
- Create a small presentation by making a gif or giphy where the answer to the question can be.
- Ask about the content of a video.
Explain the Answers after Each Round
It is convenient to explain the answers expanding the content once the question has aroused in the student’s curiosity to learn about this topic. On the results page where the bars with the students’ answers are shown, you can use the show image button to see the image that explains the answer again. Here are some ideas on how to use Kahoot to explain content:
- Start with a blind question: blind questions are about content that a priori is unknown to students. The questions have great power to arouse the curiosity of the students; we will take advantage of their answers to expose that content. It is recommended that these questions are not scored.
- Stop on those questions that generate a large number of incorrect answers or that have been answered randomly (we can see it because the distribution of the answers is similar to a Gaussian bell).
- Pause to refresh content after a series of quick questions that have the same theme in common.
Involves Students
The involvement of students in all learning processes is key to increasing both the commitment to the task, as well as the motivation towards it, as well as their ability to self-regulate their learning. We can involve students in different ways:
- Learners to Leaders: Kahoot has designed a process through which students generate their own Kahoot for their classmates after a prior research process.
- We can involve students in explaining the answers. For example, the leader of the ranking explains the reason for the last answer.
The Type of Questions Varies
The variety principle is very effective in keeping motivation and commitment to the task high. In addition, the characteristics that differentiate students make them feel more or less competent, depending on the type of questions that are asked. You can see different types of questions at the end of this post.
Create a Common Thread
This is a detail for experts. When the Kahoot has a narration that structures each question, the player has an easier time feeling that it flows through the game. Some ways to build that narration can be:
- Join some questions with others; that is, question 2 has to do with the answer to question 1.
- Create a setting around the topic, even inviting students to put nicknames related to the topic, as well as using special language and related images or videos. For example, a Quiz related to StarWars where the questions are written as if Yoda spoke and the nicknames of the students are Jose Skywalker, Pedro2-D2, Silvia Organa…
And do not Forget…
Apart from the previous tricks, some aspects to keep in mind to improve your Kahoots are:
Don’t add too many questions. Remember that a Kahoot must be around 4 minutes long, which is about 10 questions of 20″.
If you want to keep a continuous record of the assessment, ask students to use the same name each time. If you just want them to have a good time, it’s enough that they put a nickname.
Kahoot allows feedback on the experience that students have had after completing the test. Remind players to complete this screen so that you can analyze possible difficulties and suggestions for improvement.
Share your Kahoots with the community. To share effectively, it will help you to put labels and complete all the fields in the description of the Kahoot. In addition, you can share your Kahoot link in normal or ghost mode, both with your students and on social networks.
It must be an achievable challenge. It is important that questions pose some difficulty, but it is essential to ensure that most questions can be answered correctly. In the event that you do a blind Kahoot on a topic that the students do not know the contents of, we recommend that you use the Survey mode without scoring and without immediate feedback on the result. This allows students to focus on the content and not decrease their motivation due to a lack of skill to solve the challenge.