With your microlearning foundation in place, let's look at how to keep your learners actively participating. Today, we’re focusing on how to transform passive consumption into active engagement by building everything from quick, interactive quizzes to formal assessments.
Let's get started!
Why Do We Test?
When most people hear the word "quiz," they immediately think of stressful high school exams. But in the world of microlearning, quizzes serve a completely different purpose!
We don't use interactive questions just to hand out grades. We use them to:
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🧠 Interrupt the 'forgetting curve'
- The forgetting curve is a psychological model that describes how information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it.
- Forcing the brain to retrieve information right after learning it cements it into memory.
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🦺 Provide a safe space to fail
- Making a mistake on a low-stakes Gnowbe quiz is a much better place to learn than making a mistake on the actual job.
- Making a mistake on a low-stakes Gnowbe quiz is a much better place to learn than making a mistake on the actual job.
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👀 Keep learners awake
- A quick question acts as a speed bump, preventing learners from just mindlessly swiping through the content.
- A quick question acts as a speed bump, preventing learners from just mindlessly swiping through the content.
"Don't panic, Ted! It’s just a quiz to catch you before everything you just learned plummets off a cliff."
Gnowbe offers several unique Action types to bring your quizzes to life. Let’s break them down.
1. The Classic Knowledge Check: MCQ Actions
The Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) Action is the bread and butter of interactive learning. It is perfect for quickly verifying that a learner grasped the core concept of the content they just went through.
When building an MCQ Action, you can set it up to have a single correct answer or multiple correct answers (where they have to select "Multiple Answers").
💡 Pro-Tip: Don't just tell a learner they are right or wrong. Use the built-in Option feedback feature to provide immediate, constructive feedback! If they select the wrong answer, gently explain why and guide them to the right conclusion. If they get it right, reinforce the concept with a quick, "Spot on! Because..."
2. Taking the Temperature: MCQ Polls
What if you want to ask a question where there is no right or wrong answer? That is where the Poll feature comes in handy!
You can format your MCQ Action to function as a survey or poll. When a learner selects their answer, they aren't scored; instead, they immediately see a real-time bar chart showing how the rest of their peers voted.
Great ways to use Polls:
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🧊 Icebreakers
- "What is your biggest challenge with time management right now?"
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"If you had one extra hour in your workday, what would you spend it on?"
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📊 Gauging Confidence
- "Before we start this module, how comfortable do you feel using the new software?"
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"On a scale of 1-5, how ready do you feel to present this new software to a client tomorrow?"
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💡 Sparking Curiosity
- "Guess what percentage of customers prefer email over phone calls?"
- "True or False: 80% of data breaches are caused by simple password errors? (Show the poll result, then reveal the real answer in the next text action!)
3. Gamifying Vocabulary: The Word Puzzle Action
Sometimes you need to switch things up to avoid "quiz fatigue." If you are trying to teach a new industry acronym, a core value, or a specific piece of terminology, try using the Word Puzzle Action.
This is a fun, highly engaging, Hangman-style game. You provide a hint or a definition, and the learner has to guess the hidden word letter by letter. They get a limited number of "lives" (wrong guesses) before the game reveals the answer.
It is a fantastic way to inject a little playfulness into your program while still testing their knowledge!
4. Making it Official: Building Assessments
Knowledge checks (like the standard MCQ and Word Puzzle) are great for low-stakes learning along the way. But sometimes, you need something more formal. If you are building a compliance program or a certification course, you need to definitively prove that the learner has mastered the material.
For this, you will use the Assessment action type.
Unlike standard knowledge checks scattered throughout a Session, Assessments are designed to be formal tests, usually placed at the very end of a program.
- Scored Results: Assessment Actions calculate a final score for the learner.
- Passing Marks: You can set a required passing percentage (e.g., 80% to pass).
- Retry Limits: You can decide if learners get one shot to pass, or if they can retry the assessment multiple times until they pass it.
- Auto-Evaluation: Once learners complete all the required questions, the platform automatically scores their submission instantly, giving them immediate feedback without any manual grading on your end.
👉 Learn how to set up Assessment Basic here.
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Need Deeper Insights? Meet Assessment Pro!
For more comprehensive evaluation or 360-degree feedback loops, we offer Assessment Pro. This advanced feature allows for deep qualitative and quantitative evaluation.
Unlike our automated standard tests, Assessment Pro submissions are routed to a human evaluator for manual grading, personalized feedback, and thorough performance reviews.
👉 Learn more about Assessment Pro here.
By mixing up your approach using Polls to spark interest, Word Puzzles to gamify vocabulary, standard MCQs to check daily understanding, and Assessments to certify mastery, you will inject interactivity and create a dynamic, highly effective learning journey!
👉 10: Designing for Active Application & Social Learning