Exploring CodeHS Tools: QuizBuzz

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our webinar. It's going to be a quick one today because we are focusing on a specific code tool today which is our QuizBuzz app. And we are so excited you are here to join us to learn about this classroom engagement tool. And we are going to put a link to the slide deck in the chat for you. So if you want to come back to these slides at any time and use that as a resource in the future, you will have the slides available. But otherwise we will get rolling here. Thank you Danielle for putting that in the chat.

So my name is Stephanie Bennett. I am a PD specialist with CodeHS. Been with CodeHS for 2 years now, a little over two years, bringing all these amazing tools to teachers across the country and I am joined by my colleague Danielle and I'll let her introduce herself.

I am Danielle Santelli, a PD specialist here at CodeHS. I did use CodeHS when I was in the classroom. I taught computer science for about eight years at the high school level. And then I taught actually elementary music before that. So, total of about 14 years in the classroom. And I will say that QuizBuzz would have been amazing to use with my students. It is so fun and engaging and I really wish that they had it about 2 years ago when I was still in the classroom.

I know we're always improving around here. So, here we are today to talk about QuizBuzz and we hope you get excited about what you see today. So, just a note on attendance. We will be uploading the attendance from Zoom to our codes platform and sending you certificates of attendance that way. And we do ask that if you have an AI notetaker with you today, just keep that muted and do not allow it to post in the chat which we've turned off anyways. But just ask you to be cognizant of your notetaker if you have one today.

And some other housekeeping items. We are going to ask you to use the Q&A today. If you have any questions about QuizBuzz, we'll just keep our questions listed there so we can make sure we don't miss any. We want you to ask away. We encourage you to participate with us today via that Q&A feature.

We are going to be showing you the QuizBuzz tool live on the platform today. So, we would love for you to follow along if you have never signed up for a code account before. Our teacher accounts and our student accounts are free and you can create as many sections using all of our great curriculum anytime you want and have your kids rostered to sections according to your bell schedule or however you know you're implementing codes for your computer science teaching and learning needs. So, we definitely encourage you to sign up for an account if you don't have one. And while you are doing that, if you need to or logging in to the codes site if you need to, I'll tell you a little bit about us.

So, we are a full K to 12 curriculum company providing computer science educational materials, high quality instructional materials to teachers and students all over the United States and even internationally, all over the globe. And we love to provide easy access to our curriculum materials. We are a fully web-based curriculum. So anywhere students have a device and good access to the internet, they can learn computer science and we do offer PD which you know because you are here with us today and a suite of tools that we're going to check out. Like today we're checking out QuizBuzz, but we do have lots of great LMS tools you might be familiar with. For example, the ability to send messages directly to students, to grade student work in our platform, to monitor student progress, and really quickly and efficiently work with your students as they are learning computer science. So, lots of great tools today.

We are indeed focusing on our app QuizBuzz. So to show you what this app does and give you a sense for how you might use it in the classroom, we're going to do a little demo here to kick us off. So I am going to move over to my CodeHS platform. And if you have opened up your account, either setting up a new account or logging in to an account, you can follow this workflow to get to the QuizBuzz app.

So, lots of our apps live over here. Lots of our tools live over here in our left-hand side navigation. And you can open up these toolboxes by clicking these drop-down menus to open them. And I have opened up the assignments toolbox over here in the left-hand navigation. And from that assignments toolbox, I am going to click on the QuizBuzz app. It's the last item listed in this drop-down menu.

And so from here, you can see all the quizzes that are in your section that you're currently looking at. The section is listed in the upper portion of the screen. You can use this drop-down menu to switch between your sections. But all of these are quizzes that are included in my curriculum for this particular section. And when I am ready to start a QuizBuzz, all I have to do if I haven't already is convert the quiz from its multiple choice format into a QuizBuzz, which is like a live quiz game. And then we can launch it from the app here. And there's a couple other ways to navigate this workflow. We'll show them all to you today so you can be sure to understand how you can implement this really efficiently and confidently in the classroom. But I just want to show you the QuizBuzz tool in its complete form here.

So I'm going to start this demo and when I've got students ready, I can focus them on this QuizBuzz. So all my students are in the same spot at the same time and I can click start quiz. And then we can see this question here: Which of the following Python statements correctly checks if a number n is divisible by three? And you can see this countdown timer. You can see how many questions total there are and how many we have answered. I can add time here to the countdown timer. And when you're playing this live, you'll also see how many of your students have responded. And then once the time is up, we get this graphic showing how many students answered correctly, how many incorrectly, and kind of the distribution of student answers.

And then we definitely encourage you to use this as a teaching tool. So we could ask, okay students, so why is this if statement n modulus 3 equals 0 the correct answer, right? So definitely pause here, take as much time as you need to review correct and incorrect answers, and when you are ready you can move on to the next question.

But we have this fun feature where students are receiving points for their correct answers and so the faster they answer the more points they receive and of course if you want to you can display a leaderboard that looks like this one and then move on to the next question.

So our next question is: What will be printed when the following Python code is executed? If all students have answered then it will immediately move on to the correct answer and the display chart. If you are ready, you know, somebody's gotten called down to the office or has gone to a dentist appointment, you can just click next to keep moving even though all students haven't answered. So here, everybody got it correct. Yay, go students. And we can move on to our third question. I'll show you that feature where you can move on even if everybody hasn't answered yet. And then our final question.

One thing to point out too is as you might have noticed when Stephanie was progressing from one question to the next, it did like full screen show just the question before it showed the answer choices as well to give those students time to actually read it before they quick try to select their answer. So, it kind of prevents students from just doing a random guess right away to get the most points. You're actually giving those students time to just focus on what the question is before they even have the option to answer. So, that is a feature of QuizBuzz that I really like.

And thank you for bringing that up, Danielle, because it is customizable also. So, if you want to give your students more think time than just the 3 seconds we had here with the question before they see the answer choices, you have full control over how long they preview the question and how long they have to answer the question.

All right, so we got to give a round of applause to John von Neumann for winning our QuizBuzz. All right, so that is our demo and as you can see there are a lot of great features here to keep things lively in your classroom.

So QuizBuzz turns formative assessment into a classroom game. We do encourage the use of these as a formative assessment. So you can see students answer questions in real time. Teachers control that pacing and the competition settings. Results give you an immediate check for understanding, and you can use existing codes questions and quizzes or you can create your own, and we will show you all that today. So no extra login or platforms needed. QuizBuzz lives right inside of codes and this makes setting it up and launching it with your students really quick and painless. Once QuizBuzz is ready, you push it directly to your students and it populates their screen as they are on the codes site. So you would need a projector. Just like I showed you the questions, you just need your teacher screen projected somewhere where students can see it and then they get guided to the correct place once you launch the quiz.

This is definitely engaging for students. It turns learning checks into exciting fast-paced games, and students can, if it's the nature of your students, get really competitive about it or it could be a team sport too. And the check for understanding piece of it, getting that real-time feedback on student performance helps you then because we're encouraging this use as a formative assessment. Allows you to identify concepts that students might still be struggling with. Because these quizzes are so short and quick, it's not a ton of data to track, but it helps give you a good sense of where students have mastered a topic in computer science and where they might need some additional practice.

So, we encourage you this week to try QuizBuzz when you want to kick off class with a quick retrieval practice activity, check for understanding after you teach a new concept, maybe do a fun review before a quiz or a test. Definitely use those commonly missed questions to come back to and really dig into with your students, or use this on a Friday for some energy in your classroom.

These are ready to use. You can remix any codes quiz into a QuizBuzz. So, we're going to show you three different ways that you can create a QuizBuzz. The easiest one, I think, would be launching from your assignments page, opening a lesson, finding a quiz inside your lesson. You just have to click remix and select QuizBuzz, and then you have the option to adjust all those timing settings that Danielle mentioned to your preference, and also the ability to either show the leaderboard or not show the leaderboard in between the questions. So, I'll show you this workflow right now.

So this is the QuizBuzz app, but if you navigate to your assignments page, then this is where you can see all of the lessons that students are working through when they sign into CodeHS. You can open any of these lessons and anything that's called a check for understanding would be a great option for a QuizBuzz. So I like this workflow from here because I'm looking at the lesson. I know exactly what students are working through when they log into codes today. I like coming at the QuizBuzz from this direction. If I click these three dots to the right of this check for understanding activity, I have the option to remix this QuizBuzz. And right here I can see I can turn this quiz into a QuizBuzz.

And then we do have the ability to say, okay, I want to give students 30 seconds with the answer choices and I want to give students a lot of think time, maybe 10 seconds to just read the question, especially if you're doing one that has a lot of code in it. Highly recommend increasing the time that the students get to view that code before they even see the answer choices. I can click continue and then I'm going to create a new assignment because I don't want to swap the QuizBuzz out for the multiple choice quiz necessarily. I just tend to create new assignment instead of replacing current. And then when I click remix assignment, it'll pop up on this new line here and then I will have the ability to edit that QuizBuzz from here if I wanted to. I have the ability to launch it to my students from right here. So, this is one workflow for remixing a check for understanding or any multiple choice style quiz on the codes platform into a QuizBuzz.

But we do have other ways to use QuizBuzz. We also have that app and again all the same ability to make those selections on the timing and displaying or not displaying the leaderboard. Reviewing student responses once they have completed the QuizBuzz, remember for that data, we're using this as a formative assessment generally, and so a great way to see all that in the QuizBuzz app. So, I will show you what that workflow looks like.

And here we can see my QuizBuzz came through in my assignments page. I can launch it from right here if I wanted to. The other workflow is to work from the app itself. So, in the assignments toolbox, go to QuizBuzz. Before we were on the assignments view, now we are going to the QuizBuzz app. And here I can convert any of these quizzes into a QuizBuzz. I get those same options here, and I can launch my QuizBuzz assignment from here also. Same workflow, just a different navigation to get there.

And so now that you've got the basics for how to use a code check for understanding as a QuizBuzz, we're going to move into customizing QuizBuzz quizzes because you do have the ability once you've created a QuizBuzz to add questions, delete questions, change answer choices. But you also can create a new QuizBuzz from the ground up if you wanted to.

So, we did talk about using the QuizBuzz app to convert any check for understanding or quiz to a QuizBuzz live event. We've talked about this workflow of using the remix button. So, let's talk about creating a brand new quiz in the app. As we've got some options once we have started the creation process, we can import pre-existing quiz questions from any course in our entire codes catalog or we can make our own quiz questions and answers. And those can be multiple choice with text answers like we saw in the demo there. You can actually add pictures as answers if you upload those images to CodeHS, or you can make a clickable code version of a QuizBuzz and teachers really, really like that option especially as their students are focusing on coding concepts in the classroom.

So in the app is that button that we need: Create New QuizBuzz. And here you can again import questions from an existing quiz. You can find any course that you have used and find a lesson and the quizzes from those courses, or you can create your own custom questions and answers. So, let me say, who is the CodeHS mascot? And we can add anywhere from two to I believe six answer choices maybe. Oh, I probably shouldn't do Tracy because technically Tracy is a CodeHS mascot, but not the one I was thinking of. So, let's do George and Carol, which is the correct answer. So, I'm going to mark that one as the correct answer. And Bob.

And then I can click create. I can save. I can add additional questions. I can then click this configure tab to get the options of all of those timings. And then once I am ready, then I can save this and it will have created my new quiz for me, and then I can launch it when I am ready to use that in my classroom with this section of students.

All right. So you've seen the workflows. Now Danielle, did we get any questions in the Q&A that we should answer? No? Okay, good. We'll keep rolling then. If you do have questions, you've got about two or three more minutes to get those in the chat. We very much appreciate your time, but we want to make sure that you feel confident using this tool before you leave today. So, please let us know in the Q&A if you have any questions.

One thing I did want to talk about is I've mentioned that term formative assessment a couple times. And the reason for that is because we know as educators that formative assessment is really important to our planning and our next steps in the learning process, the moves we need to make to support student learning. And formative assessments just generally are a quick check for understanding. It helps inform our instruction the next school day or the next week. And we want to use those frequently in the learning process with students to identify misconceptions as soon as we've taught something so we can again catch those misconceptions or scaffold for students who might need a little bit of support, challenge students who are ready to take the idea or the concept to the next level. So formative assessment is really important and we believe that these QuizBuzz live interactive quiz games are really just that: a formative assessment to help you collect data about your student understanding.

So please know that you are fully able to review student responses after you have given a QuizBuzz to your students. Therefore you can identify questions that really challenged the class. You can look for misconceptions, things that you might need to reteach, and use those results to decide what comes next.

So, we challenge you this week. We have a challenge for you. We want you to commit to your plan to use QuizBuzz in the classroom this week. How will you implement QuizBuzz? I want you to take a second and think these steps through. I want you to choose one quiz. Start small: one section of kiddos, one quiz over a current concept you're teaching. Turn it into a QuizBuzz either through the app or through the assignments page and launch it for your students when you are live in class. Use it as a warm-up, use it as an exit ticket, use it for review before an assessment. And we would love to hear how it went with your students. We would love to hear their reception to this quick check for understanding.

And with that, Danielle, one more check for questions. No, we don't have any questions.

Just one thing that maybe I want to point out with the QuizBuzz since we do have a little bit of time here. The reason that we kind of have those two separate workflows for creating a QuizBuzz: when you create a QuizBuzz through the QuizBuzz app, it is a really easy way to create that quiz. But some of the fallbacks are that all of the quizzes for the whole course are just kind of laid out there. So, it could be hard to kind of figure out, oh wait, where is this quiz? Is this a unit quiz or is this a check for understanding quiz? So, it could be a little bit more difficult to figure out exactly what it is.

And then another thing too is when you do convert a quiz on the QuizBuzz app to a QuizBuzz, it will replace that multiple choice option. Whereas if you go through the assignments tab to convert a quiz to a QuizBuzz and you do not replace it, you choose create new activity, it will allow you to still have that multiple choice. And I like that option because it allows those students that maybe were absent or even just came in late and missed the QuizBuzz activity to still have access to those questions that you guys went through. I mean, it is helpful for them to be able to work through those questions and see what you guys did altogether, even if it isn't as fun—they missed out on the fun interactive part. So, it is a nice way to kind of still give them access to those questions. So I do like those two options where you can do that.

Another thing, one last thing: if you do decide to create your own quiz, another nice thing is when you can bring in questions from other existing quizzes. That's a really nice way to do a review before a unit assessment. Like you can make a little fun review activity by picking questions from maybe a couple questions from some of the check for understandings that you did throughout that unit. You can kind of build your own review game and then all of those will live in your My QuizBuzzes section on the QuizBuzz app. So you have those. So if anytime you teach that course and you want to access that review game, it'll always live there and you can assign it to the new section that you're teaching or however you want to use it. So anytime you make these great resources for students, they'll live in your My QuizBuzzes. So just another little explanation on how you might want to utilize those.

Yeah, thank you so much for that extra clarity on the nuances. That's really important and we frequently get asked during PDs, can I create like a mega quiz for a review session? And yes, that is exactly the way to do it. I of course happen to choose the exact same question for my mega quiz here. So, you do have the ability to remove if you accidentally add a question, decide you don't want it, you can delete it and then go back and find what you were actually looking for. So, let me see if we've got some for loops here we can import. So, yeah, those nuances and that detail is very great. I'm so glad that you added that for us.

All right. Well, then we are ready to end our session. We thank you so much for being here with us as we learned about QuizBuzz. We hope you are excited to use it with your students this week in class. Please stay in contact with us. We have more PD coming up in September and we have other ways to stay involved and in touch with the CodeHS team.

We do also have all of our previous webinars in a library available to you anytime. You can find those at codehs.com/webinars. Dig through there, see what you like, what you want to learn more about with codes.

And again, your certificate of attendance will be emailed to you. Please allow 48 hours for our team to move that from Zoom over to the CodeHS site and we will email you those certificates of completion.

And the last thing we would ask before you leave is to just give us some feedback how you did today. I think this is the first time I've done one of these tool highlights where we get to spend a good solid chunk of time on just one codes tool. We hope that you have enjoyed it and found some benefit from seeing what the QuizBuzz app is all about today. So we would love to hear how we did and we thank you for any feedback you can provide.

If you're interested in bringing CodeHS to your school or district, you can find out more at codehs.com/learnmore.

And a last thank you. We know you are so busy with back to school. We very much appreciate your time and thanks so much to you Danielle for helping out today and we'll see everybody later.