Quizzes As A Tool For Informing And Engagement

Here are a few things I learned about online quizzes while working on the recycling quiz project.

• Online quizzes can be used for more than pure entertainment, and they can still be entertaining.
  
• It takes time to do it right. I spent a lot of time writing questions, taking photos and checking the answers for clarity and still see things that I wish I had done differently.
• My gut feeling is that people will retain more from taking a well-constructed quiz than stepping through a slideshow or reading a list of bullets -- if for no other reason than that they're more involved. 
• Gamifying info can encourage the learning of it, too. People love to compete, and I made sure that it was clear from the start that they'd be measured against others.
• Keep it short if you can. According to the people at Qzzr, completions typically drop markedly if there are more than ten questions.
• Variety and humor can be your friends -- and can keep people working their way through. One of the more challenging parts of this was creating variety in the questions, so it wasn't just an endless stream of "can you recycle this?" questions.
• Wording is crucial though challenging to perfect. Despite my best efforts to make things clear, I still got a small amount of feedback that a couple of questions were unclear or misleading. Did it affect the outcome? I'm not sure. I may enlist a few more proofreaders if I do another one.   
• Make sure your explanations are clear and align with the wording of the question. I've taken other quizzes before where I answered a question incorrectly and got an explanation that didn't make it clear what the correct answer was. Don't do this. Make sure the explanation is obvious. 
• Getting the word out can be challenging, though reaching out to the right people can help. I had the most success by posting it to Reddit, followed by local neighborhood groups on Facebook and finally Twitter. As with all things online, I wished that I had more people take the quiz, though I was happy I got over 500 to take it.  
• People enjoyed and valued it. Some of the feedback I received included: "Thanks for making such a great resource!", "Best /r/baltimore post ever. Thank you!" and "tyvm for this quiz - it was fun and informative - I didn't do nearly as well as I thought I would, so you taught me quite a lot - THANK YOU!!!!"