How to Make and Run a Quiz | AhaSlides Help

How to Make and Run a Quiz

On AhaSlides you can host a live quiz and have all of your participants competing for points. Build a quiz using quiz question slides and see who ranks top of the leaderboard at the end!

Video: How to Make a Live Quiz on AhaSlides

This video explains how to make a live quiz, including everything in this article. If you are looking for a specific part in the video, please click the bottom-right button to watch it on YouTube, where you can find each section time-stamped in the description of the video.




How Does a Quiz Work?

In a quiz, participants in your presentation compete against each other to get the most points by submitting the most correct answers to your quiz questions.

You progress through the quiz, pausing at each slide for players to answer the question on that slide. All players will see a question at the same time on their personal devices, they will be able to submit the answer from there before the time runs out.


Here you can see the screens of the quiz host (on the left-hand computer) and the quiz player (on the right-hand phone).


Step 1: Choosing a Quiz Slide

On the presentation editor, create a new slide and select any of the 4 'quiz' slides as the format for that question (Spinner Wheel is not a scored quiz slide).

  1. Pick Answer: A multiple choice question with text or image answers.
  2. Type Answer: An open question with no answers to choose from. Players must type their answers.
  3. Match Pairs: A question with a set of prompts and a set of answers. Players must match the prompt to the right answer.
  4. Correct Order: A question with statements in random order. Players must put the statements in the correct order.

15-Second Explainer ⏰: Leaderboard Slides 🏆 



Once you have selected your quiz slide, a leaderboard slide will automatically generate after it.

A leaderboard slide will reveal the points tally for every quiz question that came before that leaderboard slide.


 

The final leaderboard slide will reveal the winner of the whole quiz:


 

If you want to hold your leaderboard slides until the end of the round, or the end of the quiz, simply delete all the leaderboard slides except for the ones you want to show.

 

On the leaderboard slide, you can manually award and deduct points. Simply hover over the name on the leaderboard, click 'Points' and enter how many points you would like to award, or enter a minus sign (-) followed by how many points you would like to deduct. (See here for more).

Step 2: Editing a Quiz Slide

Now you are able to edit your slide. Here's what a 'pick answer' slide will look like when it's ready to edit:



  1. Write your question - In the right-hand column, write your question in the box labelled 'Your question'.

  2. Write your answer options - Write up to 8 answer options for your players to choose from. Mark at least one of the options as correct by checking the box next to it.
With your question and answer options filled in, your slide will update automatically:



3.  Change the settings - Each quiz slide in your quiz has its own settings. Scroll down in the right-hand column to find the settings for your quiz question:

  1. Points: The maximum and minimum number of points it is possible to get on that question. If the 'Faster answers get more points' box is unchecked, then any correct answer will receive the maximum number of points.

  2. Faster answers get more points: Check this box to encourage players to answer quicker. For example, if the 'time to answer' is 100 seconds and the 'reward points' is set to 100 maximum and 0 minimum, then a player submitting their answer with 80 seconds left will receive 80 points.

  3. Time limit: The amount of seconds each player has to answer the question.

  4. Leaderboard: If this box is checked then the leaderboard will show when you move to the next slide. If unchecked, moving to the next slide will simply bring up the next quiz question.

🌘 Partial Scoring

When you're setting up a Pick Answer slide, you can mark multiple answers as correct. If you do so, the option for 'Partial scoring' will appear:



You can then choose if you want to toggle partial scoring On or Off.
  1. On - Players score points for each correct answer, but any incorrect answer will result in 0 points.
  2. Off - Players must select all correct answers to score points.
It is also possible to toggle on partial scoring on the Match Pairs slide type. Click here to read how it works.

🧩 Adding Hints

You can add hints to your quiz questions to help out players. Only the presenter can choose to reveal a hint during a question.
  1. Click the 'Add hint' button above your question.
  2. Write up to 3 hints in the boxes.
  3. Your first hint will appear in a yellow box below your question. When presenting, you can press the arrow to reveal your next hint.

Hints will appear both on the presenter's screen and the audience's screens.

💡 Please note that this feature is currently only available on the Pick Answer slide.


🎧 Adding Audio
If you are on any paid plan, you can also add accompanying audio to your quiz questions. Check this guide out for more.

Step 3: Joining a Quiz

When you have created your quiz slides, you can either invite your players to join your presentation, or you can join it yourself on your phone to test it out (which we recommend).

To start, press the blue 'Present' button in the top-right corner of the editor. This will take you into the quiz lobby, where players join your quiz before you start hosting it.

In the lobby, your players can join your quiz using either the URL code or QR code in the left-hand column.




👉 Important

If a player joins the presentation while the host is presenting a non-quiz slide (like a poll, heading or content slide), then that player has not yet joined the quiz.

To join the quiz, the host needs to present a quiz slide. When they do...

  • The host will see the lobby on their screen. This is where they can see all the players who have joined the quiz and are waiting to play.
  • The player will be asked to enter their name and choose an avatar for the quiz. Once they have chosen, they will be shown in the quiz lobby.

 


Step 4: Presenting a Quiz

When all your players have joined the quiz and are showing in the quiz lobby, you can press the blue button below that says 'Start the Quiz!'

Your first question will show on your screen and each player's phone screens. Players will have the time limit you specified in the settings to answer the question.

Proceed through your quiz like this until the final winner is announced at the end!


📊 Quiz Report

Once you've finished presenting your quiz, you can check your presentation report to see how well your players did.

Find the report by clicking 'Results' in the top toolbar, then the 'View More' button underneath your engagement rate.



There are 2 quiz-specific metrics in the report:

  1. Correct answers: This will tell you how many answers were correct out of all the answers submitted throughout your quiz.
  2. Difficult questions: These are all the questions that got a less than 40% correct rate.

(Click here to see more about reports)


Other Settings for Quizzes

Aside from the settings you can make on each slide (see step 2 for more details), you can also change the general settings for the whole quiz. These settings can be found by navigating to 'Settings' in the top bar, followed by 'General quiz settings'.




1. Lobby Chat

While waiting on the lobby screen, you can allow players to talk to each via a live chat box. You can also use this box as the presenter to send messages to your players.

When a player sends a message, their name, avatar and team will show before their message. The chat box also announces when a player has entered and left the lobby.



2. Lobby Music

You can turn on music that automatically plays during the quiz lobby screen and each leaderboard screen. You can also toggle this off and on directly on the screen itself in the top left corner.

This music is selected by AhaSlides and is not customisable. 

On a leaderboard slide, a short jingle will play while the leaderboard is rearranging itself to show the new standings. On the final leaderboard slide, a different, more triumphant jingle will play to announce the winner of the quiz.



3. 5s Countdown

When this setting is on, each question is preceded by a 5-second countdown timer, which gives your players time to read the question before they answer.


4. Play as Teams

Players can play the quiz in teams, rather than individuals.

To set this up, navigate to the top toolbar of the editor and click 'Settings', followed by 'Quiz Settings'.

Here you can check the box labelled 'Play as teams'. Once you've done that, a button will appear inviting you to 'Set up' your teams.



When you click the 'Set up' button, you will be taken to the 'Team Set Up' menu, where you can do the following...

  1. Choose the number of teams that will be playing in your quiz.
  2. Choose the team size - the maximum number of players in each team.
  3. Choose the team scoring rules...
      1. The system takes the average score of all team members, including a score of 0 for anyone who didn't answer or answered incorrectly.
      2. The system takes the total score of all team members (this can be a disadvantage for teams with fewer members).
      3. The system takes the fastest submitted answer from anyone on the team. This can be a score of 0 if the fastest answer submitted is incorrect.
  4. Create the names for each team.

When players are joining the quiz, in addition to their name and avatar, they will be asked to select a team.

On leaderboard slides, the teams' scores will be shown. You can also click the button labelled 'Show Individual Ranking' to reveal the individual scores of each player in the quiz:



5. Shuffle Options

Answer options for players on all Pick Answer, Match Pairs and Correct Order slides in your quiz will be shuffled randomly. This makes it harder for players to swap answeers by showing each other their screens.

6. Manually reveal answers

When toggled on, the presenter will see this at the end of each quiz question 👇 This gives them the chance to explain the question in greater detail before revealing how everyone voted in the question.





Audience-Paced Quizzes

You can also let your players play a quiz without a host.

This is great for teachers who want to assign a quiz as homework, or for quiz masters who want to give their players freedom to complete a quiz at a time that suits them.

To set this up, navigate to the top toolbar of the editor and click 'Settings', followed by 'Who takes the lead'.

Select 'Audience (self-paced)'.



Now, your players will proceed through each question on their own. On leaderboard slides, they'll see their ranking against the rankings of every player who's already played the quiz.




FAQ
1. Why isn't my quiz asking players for their names?

Usually, your quiz isn't asking players to fill out their name for one of two reasons:

    1. You may have chosen a 'poll' slide instead of a 'pick answer' slide. These slides look very similar, but only the pick answer slide is a quiz slide, so only the pick answer slide will ask players for their names while you're presenting the slide. (See here for more).
    2. You may be presenting any other non-quiz slide. If your players join your presentation when you're presenting a heading, list, image or any other non-quiz slide type, it will not ask for their names. Once you move onto the first quiz slide of your quiz, your players will be asked for their names. (See here for more).

 

2. How can I clear player answers on my quiz?

If you've just tested your quiz with a real device, want to reuse a quiz, or made a mistake and want to start a quiz over, you can clear any answers submitted to your quiz, all without affecting the content of your quiz.


You can clear all responses in your quiz or just the responses from one question. Check out this article to find out how.


3. How can I test my quiz?

The best way to test a quiz is by using Preview Mode. This is a test mode where you can try out your quiz from both the presenter screen and the player screen.

You can also test out a quiz by simply joining it on your own phone, or getting some friends to join it, then playing along as if it were a real quiz. If you use this method, remember to clear your own answers after you've tested your quiz.

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