If you are a teacher or professor then it is a good idea to have some form of classroom learning management system.

Your institution might actually already have one. But from my experience these enterprise solutions can be clunky and boring.

So by all means continue using that (I don’t want to get you in trouble), but you also may consider starting your own unique (mini) LMS to supplement your course subject.

While this may seem like a daunting task, let me give you an easy way to accomplish this as means for getting the ball rolling:

Quizzing.

I’m serious, that’s it.

Forget about gamification, fancy graphics, points distribution and leaderboards. Simply start with a basic “at home” quiz that students can take between class time.

Just requiring a quiz isn’t going to provide much value. You have to do something with the results.

For example, one good use of classroom time is to use it for simulations and exercises (often a characteristic of a flipped-classroom).

Prior to this exercise the students take the quiz, and you can set-up a notification that tells you when a student fails to reach a certain percentage (for example, anyone who gets 60% or lower).

Armed with this information you can now place the individuals with lower scores with the students who achieved high quiz scores during the simulation fostering a supportive learning environment.

See how easy this is?

Just by using a quiz on your own personal learning management system you create better learning experiences for your students. You didn’t need all the fancy “bells and whistles” (though those do have merit).

And if you’re wondering how you can create these kind of automatic quizzes, LearnDash has you covered. You can send out notifications, award different statues, allow a certain number of retakes, and more.

You could literally set this simple configuration up over the weekend and improve the classroom experience by next week.