Mobile phones are largely being used as communication and entertainment devices. But the potential to run third-party applications and the ability to hook-up to the internet means it can very well be utilised as a great learning tool as well.

Today we take a look at one such site called Mobile Study that helps educationalists in creating quizzes which can be downloaded and answered over students` handsets.

Creating a mobile quiz

On MobileStudy.org home page, select the link, `Create Your Own Quiz Now.`

Step 1 Window is displayed, with a warning that without getting free sign-up first, any other user may edit the quiz you are creating. But you have to proceed without registration for now. Enter any title for the quiz, its introduction, select language (English), and optionally enter phone number where the quiz result is to be sent as SMS (this functionality did not work in our tests though).

Check the box `Use quick quiz wizard` as this allows entering all the questions and answers in one go without having to go to a new page for each question entry. This option is useful if you already have a document ready with questions and answers. Click Next Step button.

Step 2 Here, all the questions and answers along with their explanations can be entered. You can differentiate among these three sections use `?` at the end of question; use `!` at the end of explanations, and in between both, provide multiple choices with the correct one ending in `*`.

For example

Capital city of Pakistan is?

Karachi

Islamabad*

Lahore

You can add more questions here and when you are done, click Next Step. This is where all the questions are displayed, with correct ones in bold and explanations in Italics. Review and make changes if required by clicking on Back button, if not, then click on Next.

The third and last step allows quiz sharing options; if you choose to check the Public option (which you should for now), the quiz will be available over the web as well as in a mobile version for the handsets; press Finish.

Two links are displayed to access this quiz - the first is from a PC and the second is from the mobile device. Both these links display the list of quizzes created by unregistered `guest` users. For each quiz, several options are available. Users can take the quiz online, download over phone, share, edit and delete them. Try the first option — `Do quiz online`. This is an added advantage of creating quizzes at Mobile Study, as teachers can share quizzes over the web with students. Now select `Install onto phone` link.

There are four options available through which a quiz can be downloaded over cellphones. First, through a download link, that is sent via an SMS to the handset. Second by using QR Code, this is a shortcut to enter the download link directly on the handset without having to type it. To use this, take a snap of QR Code image provided online using mobile phone camera, and use a free mobile application such as QR Midlet, Kaywa Reader, etc., to `convert` the image into download link.

The third and fourth options are the easiest and most feasible ones — that is either download the application file (JAR file) on PC and copy it to the handset using USB cable or Bluetooth, or point the handset browser to the application download link to directly download the application. However, it requires internet connectivity, like GPRS. Mobile-based quizzes can be made more interesting by adding images to questions, but care should be taken to keep the image size and resolution low so that the size of download does not cross the capability of mid-range phones.

Mobile-based quizzes allow students to learn anywhere anytime, at their own convenience and using a device they are already in love with. Even young students can be made to go through learning material presented in this form as quizzes are combined with detailed information that appears after every correct or incorrect answer in the form of an explanation. The choices answers offered are randomly ordered every time which means one student may not remember the correct sequence and two students taking the quiz side by side cannot possibly cheat by simply indicating to each other the correct answer number.

Teachers can also ask students to create quizzes as individual or group assignment and share with the class, and in doing so, students would automatically learn about the topic while creating correct choices and adding explanations.

The FAQ section of Mobile Study provides more scenarios where mobile quizzes can be used for example, as a class activity, as revision material for a topic already covered in the class, creating same quiz in two different languages (by simply altering the language) to assist learning a second language and facilitating remote students etc.

Mobile Study is a novel idea for teachers to keep pace with the technology and develop more intuitive and engaging ways for students to learn. So keep learning in the mobile world!