Quia! (pronounced key-uh) is short for Quintessential Instructional Archive. That’s what it is—a storehouse of instructional quizzes and games that you can use and create yourself. As a trainer, you’re going to love Quia! once you see the promising possibilities it has to offer.

Choices galore
After going through a simple registration process, you can do any or all of the following:

  • Create eight different types of online games.
  • Create online quizzes, both basic and Java-based (which allows each quiz to be built differently with the questions in random order).
  • Create a class page to help you manage an online course or to supplement a traditional class or workshop.
  • Collect data on quiz results, do administrative functions, etc.
  • Share your game designs with colleagues and students.
  • Add your game designs to the site for others to use.

You can organize all of your creations and administration through an easy-to-use Activity Manager.

What I liked about Quia!
The term easy-to-use is an apt description of this site, as all the tools are well defined, described, and implemented. The first thing you want to do when you go to the site is take a look at some of the quizzes and games built by other users. Take a few minutes to play. You won’t have any trouble finding something of interest—either because you’d like to learn about it or because you’re already an expert. There’s a handy Top 100 list of the most popular designs, or you can look for something by topic area. This site seems to focus on the educational set, with lots of games and quizzes built for languages, history, geography, and more.

While this site may be more focused on the educational market, there are still some basic games for technology, which give an idea of how you can use these games and quizzes in your own IT training classes. The tools are powerful.

What you won’t find at Quia!
When you visit Quia! , there are many things you won’t see. You won’t see ads or banners. You won’t see a sales pitch for the organization. In fact, I wish I could learn a little bit more about them—they went overboard on modesty.

The verdict
Learning is more effective when it’s interactive and fun. Quia! gives us an easy and free way to include those dimensions in our learning events. It succeeds in getting us to think about easy ways to improve our learning and gives us tools to help us get there. I highly recommend the site.
If you have a favorite Web site you’d like to recommend to other IT trainers, please send us a note . Don’t forget to post your comments at the end of this article.