Gamifying Learning with Kahoot

I decided to use kahoot after a less successful experience with my EAP students earlier this semester. There are several task sheets with detailed and explicit task requirements in EAP033 and there are online lessons explaining them and activities in seminars checking and enhancing their understanding. The first task sheet was released in week 3 and I mentioned its importance and asked some questions in seminars that week. The deadline for the first draft was Monday 10 October 2022 (Week 5) and I received many messages from my students for clarification of the task requirements over the weekend.  Since then, I have used Kahoot five times from week 5 to week 14 and, in week 7, it was used to enhance their understanding of two concepts: cohesion and coherence.

In my classes, Kahoot! has been proven to be a helpful and interesting tool. Students are generally willing to participate and are excited about the final ranking, especially when they use funny nicknames. They prefer multiple choice and true or false because they are easy to answer: choosing a colour. They also have a bigger reaction when they answered one question wrongly and when they were not sure about one answer, they would actively seek for help from each other. When more than half of them answered one question incorrectly, there was usually a discussion and those who knew the right answer(s) would voluntarily explain. In addition, I received fewer messages from my students before the deadlines after week 5.

Immediate feedback for me and my students:

For me, I feel that if students are struggling with the understanding of requirements one or two days before the deadline, I have not done a good job in the process and I need to make some changes. The breaking point might be receiving more feedback from students through formative assessment. Kahoot! provides multiple choices for me to achieve this.

For students, they are motivated and excited because there is instant feedback in a fun way: colours and voices. Moreover, they are less demotivated when they see they make the same mistake as others.

First of all, teachers need to do some preparations in advance. The preparations normally involve the design of questions and answers, time setting, internet check and loading. I usually open the entrance page 5-10 minutes before so it is ready when the lesson begins. Although it does not need a VPN, it can take a long time to load.Additionally, it works better in onsite lessons than online lessons in my experience. It is a competition game and they need to look at both your screen and their screens. Also, it is more interesting when they learn about the correct answers through discussions.