EDTC 6432 Level 1 Gameful Learning: Review Games

Review Game: Kahoot

Assessment

Criteria Categories	Poor	Fair	Good	Very Good	Excellent
1. The game has clear learning objectives that are merged with gameplay.			x
2. The game is a valid formative assessment, actionable for teachers.				x
3. The game includes instruction to guide students toward greater understanding	x
4. The game promotes strategic thinking.	x
5. The game shows multiple representations of the content.	x
6. The game deeply engages students.					x
7. The game motivates students to challenge themselves.		x

Review

I looked into Richard Bryne’s resources for review games for students. The one I am accustomed to is
kahoot.it. This is a fun game for students to really play against others in a drill type system where 
students battle against each other to get the top score. It is similar to a game at some restaurants like the 
Ram or Buffalo Wild Wings with BuzzTime. As a math teacher I want students to read about the question,
understand what it means, and answer it in an efficient manner. This was a game I used frequently to help
my geometry students prepare for state exams and upcoming assessments in class. Recently as last year I 
have noticed exploits in the game and problems with students. One of my students informed me about the
exploit of adding in bots into the game. KahootSpam is a website that allows for how many “players” the
person wants to add to the game. The goal is to overload the game with random bots to confuse the 
teacher or potentially crash the game. It is now a pay for service, but each person can potentially add up 
to 100 bots and with a class of 30 students that is approximately 3,000 bots added in. Kahoot tried to 
combat this with an optional additional four digit code that changes every few seconds. The problem is 
the students are not fast at typing the code in and it makes it more of a headache for the teacher to hear, 
“this is stupid” and ‘why do we have to do this?!” This in turns lowers the participation of the game.

I have also noticed a major problem with students playing the game. The question is up on the screen and
 they have at maximum four choices. There are students who will shout out an answer to get other students to 
unknowingly pick the wrong response or give out the answer. The students don’t gain anything from 
that. Also, the game rewards those who are quick at finding the answer. That means it leaves my smarter 
students excelling at answer the problems and my lazy or struggling students to play probability by 
randomly picking the answer. 

I do know of an alternative that does not fix every issue that I have made about Kahoot, but in my 
opinion is better. The game, Quizizz is similar in that it is a formative assessment like Kahoot. It works 
very similarly with questions being presented, the students have up to four choices and they have to 
respond efficiently. There are differences such as students have the questions on their devices. They can 
go at their own pace with each question and they can be set in a random order so the person next to them 
can’t cheat. The teacher shows only the progress of the students. What it also has is a need feature that it 
categorises the questions by how well the students do so it can be reviewed. There is even a brand new 
feature of the questions being tied to different standards. This is a great tool for student growth goals in 
the evaluation system for teachers. It still has similar flaws like Kahoot such as it promotes speed rather
than understanding. It also has a bit of learning curve when it comes to setting up the game. Overall, 
Kahoot is a good start for math teachers who need a different approach to formative assessments that are 
geared toward reviewing concepts. Once they have a good understanding, then I encourage them to look 
at others that are a little bit more complicated, but worthwhile.