This article was published in the September 2016 newsletter by Tom Gottschalk, COO, Medical Educator

How many times have you heard that you must attach emotion to the learning process in your classroom? We know that emotion helps to move new information from temporary storage to long term memory and we try to incorporate activities, such as games, that will invoke an emotional response from our students to help them retain the information presented.

There are many gaming options available for use in your classroom. Most of them are labor intensive to set up. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an option available that did the bulk of the work for you?

Welcome to Group Testing, a feature of EMSTesting and PlatinumTests
Group Testing is an online quizzing platform that is setup like the trivia based quizzing that is popular in restaurants across the country.

How does it work?
As an instructor you are able to select the topic material for the quiz and the number of questions to be asked. The system generates a quiz based on your input and delivers it to your class one question at a time. The virtual game host will even read the questions aloud to the participants! Your students are able to interact with the game by using their smart phones or tablets and points are awarded based on correct responses. The game keeps track of all the scores and displays them on a leaderboard.

Sounds like fun, right? Yes! Is there a practical application for the use of Group Testing in the classroom? Absolutely!

Let me share with you just a few real life ways that Group Testing could be used in the classroom:

• Ice Breaker/Knowledge check on new topic – You will be covering the material from chapter 12 on Wednesday and the students were to have read the chapter and prepared prior to coming to class. You would like to do a knowledge check to see where the student’s level of understanding is. You could set up a quick 10 question quiz on Group Testing covering the material from chapter 12 and run a quick game right at the beginning of class. Since all students would be participating, you would quickly be able to identify the areas of weakness, as well as, those students that did not prepare.
• Review at the end of a module – Set up a Group Testing quiz that will cover the module that you have recently completed. Have your students compete individually or in small teams as they answer the questions. This would be a fun way to identify broad areas that may need your review prior to administering a module exam.
• Just for fun and bragging rights!
• From time to time you could set up a Group Testing quiz and use it for a general review – Have the students compete individually or in small teams for fun or for bragging rights in the classroom.
• Or event set up a Group Testing quiz and use it for attendance – We got this awesome idea from one of our customers!

These are just a few suggestions as to how Group Testing could be effectively used in the classroom. Get creative, evoke emotion, and create memories for your students that will allow them to learn while they have fun!

If you are not already a customer of EMSTesting or PlatinumTests and would love to use our Group Testing feature, contact us at 616-818-7877 or contact [email protected]