AI Tools for Questions & Discussions

  1. Questionwell

Questionwell is an AI platform created by a middle-school science teacher that generates a boundless supply of questions based on input reading material. Simply add a topic or input some reading, and Questionwell will write multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and essential questions that can be exported to various platforms.

Questionwell allows teachers to input any topic and reading material, such as a book, an article, a video, or a website, and generate questions based on the content and the level of difficulty. Teachers can choose from four types of questions: multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and essential. They can also edit, delete, or add questions as they wish. By default, the AI is set to try to produce 20 unique questions.

Questionwell also provides learning objectives and standards alignment for each question set. Teachers can export the questions to various platforms, such as Kahoot, Quizziz, Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, Gimkit, Moodle, Canvas, Booklet, and Quizlet, and use them for assessment, review, or enrichment purposes. But Questionwell does not collect and work with any student data.

While there are several free question formats, if you want questions intentionally and explicitly aligned to Standards, then you have to buy a paid subscription.

  • Price: Free for educators; Paid plan for extra features = $7/month or $70/year.

  • URL: https://www.questionwell.org/

Tom’s Take:

Questionwell is intuitive and easy to use, provides plenty of useful questions, and provides tips along the way to help teachers. There are plenty of features to work with questions, though there isn’t the ability to add multimedia to questions. In addition to questions, teachers can create different assessments to address students' learning needs.

But, AI sometimes produces strange or off-topic content and Questionwell is no exception. So, teachers may find the quality and usefulness of the questions inconsistent. And many teachers will be disappointed that they must pay for questions directly aligned to Standards. That said, Questionwell is an excellent educational product at a reasonable cost.

2. Parlay

Parlay is an AI-powered tool that facilitates class discussions based on input topics or texts. It can create written or live discussion activities, with features like secret identities, peer feedback, model submissions, and more. It also provides analytics and insights on student participation and performance.

Parlay has three main components: The Parlay Universe library of pre-made discussion topics, the Written Roundtable for written discussion activities, and the Verbal Roundatable. Teachers can search or browse discussion topics in Parlay Universe or create their own. Parlay Genie is an AI-infused prompt creation tool where teachers select the number of questions they want, input the topic and select the grade level.

Teachers have the option of whether the activity is going to be used online or live. In an online discussion, teachers have the option of creating a new course or selecting a course they have already created. After selecting a course, teacher users will select whether this activity is going to be used online or live. Teachers will need to invite student users by sending them a link, an access code, or connecting to their Google Classroom. Once student users join, they can see the prompt and write their response. Once complete, students need to click the “Submit Response” option on the bottom of the screen.

Parlay features an assessment tool that allows teachers to track, score, and provide feedback to both students' participation in the discussion and written responses. Teachers can toggle the anonymity, assessment, and feedback settings on and off, so other student users can see the identity of the students who commented and provide feedback.

Discussions can be exported to Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams.

Pricing: Free for up to 30 students, then $9.99/month or $99/year.

URL: https://www.parlayideas.com/

Tom’s Take:

Parlay is a terrific tool if for teachers who want to make discussion a central part of their pedagogy. It has some great features to promote online discussion, such as “secret identity” — to prompt students to contribute — as well as prompts to help generate participation. It goes a little further than Questionwell in providing ways to promote and sustain discussion with students.

Teachers might leverage Parlay for “practice” conversations online as a transition (or “parlay”) to in-class conversations. As such, students can work on skills both for communicating online and traditionally. But online discussions are very device-dependent and Parlay has fewer LMS exporting options than Questionwell, which may frustrate some teachers.

3. Quillionz

Quillionz stands as a pioneer in AI-powered platforms, facilitating the generation of questions, notes, and quizzes from any given content. Available in both free and premium versions, it offers a versatile toolset including the creation of multiple-choice, short descriptive, and recall questions, with an added advantage of reduced processing time in the paid version. Moreover, it seamlessly integrates with third-party Learning Management Systems and online publishing platforms.

Quillionz faces more competition than when it launched it services in 2019, but maintains its appeal, especially among educators seeking to streamline the quiz creation process. It uniquely identifies segments of the input content that can be optimized to craft high-quality questions, a feature that distinguishes it from other tools discussed here. Once the question set is prepared, users have the flexibility to download it in various formats or even devise a self-test through "Quilliquiz."

  • Price: Free = multiple-choice, short-answer and recall question. Premium is $99/year

  • URL: https://www.quillionz.com/

Tom’s Take:

Quillionz is a trialblazer in online quiz-question creation, but there are AI-infused systems that offer more features geared to educators. Quillionz is intuitive, well organized, and does enable educators to choose a subject area, but not a grade level (as you can in Parlay). And I wasn’t impressed with its accuracy. When I prompted it for questions on the U.S. revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, it only offered the United States political system as a topic of interest.

Also, tt’s $29 month-to-month cost is also pricey for teachers who might want to try it out premium features for a few months. And it doesn’t provide many teacher-friendly LMS exporting options.

Sorcerer

Sorcerer by Antimatter is a an AI tool in beta that asks questions about the content you upload to help gauge your knowledge and understanding of the material. Sorcerer allows you to upload both written content and media and offers five levels of difficulty for questions, from Middle School to PhD. Teachers can set up an activity to share with students, but Sorcerer does not display any individual student name/username.

Sorcerer provides a demo for US History content.

Sorcerer is a great tool for creating differentiated questions that could be the basis for discussion or an assessment, like a quiz.

Price: Free

URL: https://antimatter.systems/sorcerer

AI Tools for Teachers

My goal is to help teachers find AI tools to assist them with their various teaching responsibilities.

As I review AI tools I have three main criteria in mind:

  1. A robust range of features to help teachers.

  2. An intuitive interface to help teachers

  3. An affordable price for teachers (and schools).

I color code my rating of each criteria as follows:

  • GREEN= Very Good

  • YELLOW= Fair

  • RED = Poor

I do not accept money for reviews.

- Tom Daccord

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