Be a quiz-master with Microsoft Forms

Forms are a popular way of collecting organisational information. Much more user friendly than the spreadsheets of old. The Quiz feature in Microsoft forms which has some nifty nuances which will be appealing to trainers and educators.

Benefits over a form

For the most part the layout, background and question options are the same for quizzes as it is for a standard Microsoft form. But there are some important differences which make it so useful.

Assign points to a question for grading
Add ‘correct answers’ to free text questions
Include mathematical equations
Show auto-graded results to participants
Review answers and change points
Add comments on correct / incorrect answers for participants to review

Training quiz example

On a recent revision of our intranet editor training I wanted to make better use of digital tools to remove manual work from the training process. Using a form for post-training assessment was one of these.

I created a quiz which includes:

Free text fields with preset answers
Multiple choice questions with 1 answer
Multiple choice questions with many answers
A check list of items for participants to confirm

With the training quiz I participants can instantly see what they got right or wrong and I can grade it. In our previous process I was manually checking ‘homework’ but with this process I only need to check and respond to what has been submitted

Working example of our training quiz

There are even more features that would be of interest to trainers and educators including calculations.

Create a quiz with Microsoft forms – Office support

I can see opportunities to combine the power of the quiz with flow to improve the process further. Something I hope to be able to experiment with.

If your organisation doesn’t have a learning management system, or perhaps it is not suited for your needs, quizzes offer a simple and easy to create alternative.

Room for improvement

The quiz feature as it is serves most of our needs very well. There are a few things that I would like (or perhaps are not obvious) that could improve the experience.