Kahoot is DESIGNED to encourage CHEATING. Please fix!
Sorry for the long explanation, but I need some space to make clear exactly what the problem is:
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When I make a Kahoot quiz for one of my college courses, I set it to Private, so that my students cannot cheat by searching it out in advance of the class session.
However, after they take the Kahoot quiz during class, the full contents of the quiz become available to the students for all time.
Think about it for a minute. You’re a teacher. You use Kahoots in your class as graded events. You record the underlying scores, and use them as grades for your students.
Do you make a new set of quizzes, with brand-new questions, every semester?
Of course, you do not. That would be an immense, needless effort. You remake them only as needed.
So, as a teacher, would you want all the questions and answers for all of your quizzes floating around your school, for everyone to share?
Of course, you would not.
You would collect each quiz back, in class, after students take it—precisely to remove them from circulation in the school.
Otherwise, a student in the morning class can take the quiz, then share all of the correct answers with the student in the afternoon class.
Students finishing the Fall semester of the course could give—or even sell—their Kahoot reports to students coming in for the Spring semester.
And students who failed your course and must re-take it the next semester will have all the questions and all the answers to every quiz you give throughout the whole course. (This is happening right now in one of my courses.)
As a tool for measuring student preparation and knowledge, all of your Kahoot quizzes are now worthless.
This is a catastrophic flaw in the design of the app.
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Of course, I understand that many people who make Kahoots want them to be shared widely, all over the world, for fun. It’s part of the appeal of your application.
However, many people who make Kahoots want to hold their contents closely, and keep them private, so they can be used as legitimate assessments of student knowledge.
I am asking for the following fix:
If someone sets a Kahoot to Private, as I have done with all of mine, please make it so the results are also private—correct answers are shown to the students in the context of the game-play, but there is no report generated for them afterward.
I have made dozens of Kahoots, representing hundreds of hours of labor. To discover these Kahoot quizzes are all useless as graded class events is a serious blow to my teaching.
Please make this feature an option for teachers who need to restrict access to their questions and answers, in order to preserve their value. Thank you.
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I support you 100%--your suggestion makes perfect sense. Since I'm a newby at this, I will only use this platform for fun review games and informal assessment until the option you suggested is implemented.
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My students tell me all the time how much they prefer Kahoots over the old paper quizzes, and I can see that it generates a thrill in the room while they play.
But it is beginning to dawn on my students how the reports feature can be turned to their advantage—students in two separate courses I'm teaching this semester have independently begun to take advantage of this gap in the design.
Unless the Kahoot software engineers come up with a fix soon, I will have to abandon the app and go back to the old paper quizzes to get an accurate measure of student knowledge and preparation.
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I'm ready to upgrade to the paid version of the app, if you create a feature allowing teachers to keep the results private, so our quizzes retain long-term value.
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I agree with all of the comments above.
Also, please allow teachers to download a class list from an excel format or type in names. I would definitely upgrade if it had features to make this an assignment.
It is great review and keeps the pace going quickly. Even being able look at how the reviews went would tell me where I should focus my instructions.
Honestly it is pretty unclear how upgrading really helps me.
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I support this feature as well.
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Totally agree.
I love kahoots, but there are a few flaws. If these gaps and cracks in the system were cared for, I would definitely be in for the pay.
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I JUST realized this today, unfortunately way too late. My entire final exam was on kahoot and now one student has the entire thing. Just shameful. What is the point of "private"???
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I did not know this until today ... all the hours I put in are down the drain!!
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This was a problem before the global pandemic, but now that all of my classes have gone online all the time, and I have to administer even my midterm and final exams electronically, this flaw in the design has become even more dire, and in urgent need of repair.
Fix this problem, and I will sign up as a paying member the same day.
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I support this suggestion fully. I wasn't aware of this feature until a student recently told me he had all the questions and answers ..... I was surprised to learn this feature exists and I agree it needs to be changed. Or as was suggested, changed if you mark your quizzes as private
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Kahoots! has been such a welcomed teaching tool. It's akin to the world of gaming and students become so excited and have fun playing it, while simultaneously learning. In the current and increasingly online learning environment, Kahoots! can play a vital role in bringing learning to life!
It is unfortunate, however, that there are no safeguards against students gaining access to quiz materials. This problem does not bode well for teachers, and it ultimately won't bode well for your company. It would already be a concern to know a student accessed exam materials. However, now with all of the expanded online instruction going on, there is an added incentive to identify resources that circumvent a student's access to proprietary materials. I sincerely hope your organization will take a serious look at how this issue can be resolved.
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