Ramp Up Training Programs for Tech and Website-Building Teams with Quizizz: A Gamified Engagement Platform

TL; DR: Quizizz, a provider of gamified quizzes and interactive lessons, is used by educators in more than half of U.S. schools and 150 countries. But the engagement platform is not just for students. With tools for quizzes, presentations, polls, and e-learning, Quizizz is also ideal for training your tech and site-building teams. As for what the future holds, Quizizz fans can expect a range of new solutions designed to facilitate collaboration across entire organizations.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the trend toward flexible and remote working environments, and many of us are experiencing that shift firsthand. Along with the positives — think all-day pajamas, more family time, and the commute-free mornings and afternoons — there have also been negatives.

Many employees are feeling isolated and disconnected from their jobs, and doctors are noticing a spike in mental health conditions related to COVID-19 across the general population.

In times like these, facilitating meaningful, engaging, and rewarding workplace interactions is more important than ever. Fortunately, several Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions in the marketplace address these needs and help leaders build more resilient organizations, even post-pandemic.

“The push to have everything online resulted in huge amounts of growth within markets for tech-enabled companies and schools,” said Connor Pierson, Head of Growth at Quizizz. “We’re in this moment where there’s a really compelling reason for people to pick up online tools — and many of them are doing so for the first time.”

Quizizz helps engage remote employees through online quizzes, presentations, polls, and e-learning tools. These solutions are also perfect for the virtual classroom, empowering educators and parents to teach nearly any subject on any device.

Whether the objective is teaching a virtual classroom of third-graders or training your software development company’s site-building team, Quizizz makes engagement rates soar. With upcoming solutions designed to facilitate collaboration across entire organizations, the software will only become more useful as time goes on.

The history of Quizizz is firmly rooted in education. Deepak Joy Cheenath and Ankit Gupta founded Quizizz in 2015 while volunteering to teach remedial math at a school in Bangalore, India. At the same time, they were considering starting an ed-tech company.

“They were testing out some different concepts while volunteering, but they were really interested in gamification,” Connor said. “They started out with a story-based math curriculum but found out that what resonated most with the students was the competition. It was competitive in a way that wasn’t too cutthroat. And that inspired what later became Quizizz.”

The Quizizz team was careful to monitor user feedback early on while working online with teachers across the globe. Connor told us the company’s customer support inbox essentially served as a receptacle for product development priorities.

“We would keep building as quickly as possible to meet the needs of teachers,” he said. “Pretty soon, teachers — especially in the U.S. — were sharing Quizizz throughout the country. Within three years, we were in over 50% of K-12 schools in the U.S.”

Over time, Quizizz expanded beyond both K-12 schools and the U.S. market. Today, the company serves more than 50 million people from businesses and nonprofit organizations across different verticals, market segments, and countries.

Today, Quizizz offers a wide range of customizable solutions catered to the needs of businesses and schools.

On the academic side, the company’s distance-learning resources include a database of millions of teacher-created quizzes with automatic grading functionality. Subject areas include English, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, world languages, and creative art. The database also includes courses on computer science and technical education, such as this one on site building and maintenance.

When used in the workplace, the platform can be used to train employees, make online meetings more interesting, and retain customers. Its remote-friendly tools can also be used to create a dialogue with audience members during presentations via interactive instruction, breakout activities, and leaderboards. The software works with any online conferencing technology, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex.

The unifying fabric between all of the company’s products and services is a strong emphasis on engaged learning.

“That means more than one person being engaged while they learn — it’s about giving everyone an opportunity,” Connor said. “In an environment like a gamified quiz, it’s not just about the top three scores. We want everyone to have a chance to replay that quiz and improve on their own score if they want to. We also include accessibility features like text-to-speech tools.”

The Redemption Questions feature, for example, gives the user a second chance to answer incorrect questions at a later time.

“If you get a question wrong in a quiz or in a lesson, later on, you might see that question again,” Connor said. “When it pops up, you feel like, even though you’re not number one on the leaderboard, you have the chance to still be in the game. It’s really about individual growth.”

Quizizz makes sense from a business perspective as well. The company helps teaching and training professionals save a lot of time that could be wasted on set-up struggles. And it’s 100% free to get started.

“We know that in terms of setting this up, it has to be simple and intuitive,” Connor said. “You can’t have your participants spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to login. So we really focused on delivering time-savings in product development. “Typically, an instructor can set something up using existing content in just a couple of minutes and participants can join in just seconds. They don’t even have to go through the account setup process if they don’t want to.”

Quizizz also offers some degree of white label flexibility, allowing companies and schools to incorporate branding into their training platforms. These features add a sense of professionalism for projects like a software company’s site-building demo.

Connor told us customers have reported increased employee satisfaction when using Quizizz for training sessions — even when communicating painfully boring information.

“As an instructor or a trainer, it feels great because learners will come up to you and say, “This compliance documentation course is the worst part about every job I’ve started. But this is the best version I’ve ever seen!’” Connor said. “Taking something that is traditionally boring and making everyone engaged is our sweet spot.”

Until now, Quizizz has been a product designed for the individual teacher, HR leader, or business trainer. But Connor told us that the company is actively exploring the ability to support entire organizations.

“Increasingly, we want to create spaces where people can collaborate within an organization, build content with your team, have it live there, and post it over time,” he said.

The collaboration tools will be geared toward schools, school districts, and businesses.