Quizzes are a pleasant form of entertainment for many people, and thanks to the “Testownik” application, created by students from the Strategic Student Research Club Solvro, they can now also help with learning. Especially before the winter exam session at WUST, which starts on February 5.

Quizzes, exams, projects – for students the exam session means long evenings spent over books and piles of notes. During this period, effective study organisation and efficient revision become crucial. The Testownik application, which we already know from the previous winter exam session, can help students quickly and conveniently consolidate knowledge.

– I came up with the idea for the application while studying for a physics exam. I was looking for an accessible program that would help me remember all the material more easily. It turned out that available solutions were unintuitive, inconvenient to use, and additional options required payment – says Antoni Czaplicki from the Solvro club, the creator of the application and a third-year student of Technical Computer Science.

– Then I decided to create something myself. At first it was a small website where everything worked “with one click”. I shared it with people studying in my programme and it turned out many of them started using it regularly, so I decided to develop the idea further – he adds.

He submitted the project to the Solvro Student Research Club, where it sparked great interest. Today as many as 13 people are working on its development, and the “small website” created by a single user has grown into a full educational platform that has already been viewed over 135,000 times.

Solve a quiz – it’s simple

The main functionality of the platform is quizzes created by the users themselves. Based on available learning materials, they can prepare sets of questions and answers that can be solved individually or in teams. After creating a quiz, it can be shared by copying a link and sending it to friends or even to the entire course group.

– Whether our answer is correct is visible immediately, but the application also includes many additional features that make adding questions and multiple answers extremely easy. When solving a quiz, we can also open an additional window and ask ChatGPT to explain the answer. In the future we want to integrate this function directly with our platform so everything will be available with a single click – explains the creator of the application.

Quizzes can be edited individually or collaboratively. Sharing a quiz with other users allows them either to modify questions and answers directly or review them and report possible mistakes. These reports are automatically sent to the authors as notifications, making it easier to identify errors and quickly correct them.

– The quiz format is a great learning method, definitely more engaging than memorising long blocks of text. We can immediately check whether our answer is correct and correct mistakes. For many people, working in groups can also be a big advantage because complex tasks can be solved together and difficult issues explained along the way – says Daria Totoszko from the Solvro Student Research Club, a third-year student of Management Engineering.

Ambitious plans

Quizzes are stored in the cloud, so after each update they do not need to be synchronised across multiple devices. The developers are also working on features that will allow users to see the history and statistics of solved quizzes.

– This will make it possible to identify which types of questions were the most difficult and prepare better for them. We also want to open the platform to lecturers so they can publish sample quizzes, for example for students attending lectures, allowing them to test their knowledge – announces Antoni Czaplicki.

The application can be used without registration, but logging in, for example through USOS Web, provides access to more features, such as synchronising progress in real time or easily finding friends. A useful feature for logged-in users is also a quick grade-average check – something that is missing in the USOS system itself. Importantly, grades are not stored anywhere by the application; they are only displayed to the user after opening the page. The application itself is fully open source, so everything remains transparent.

Large and active community

Although the tool was created at WIT, it can be used by all students of the university. Currently the system contains nearly 2,000 quizzes and around 230,000 individual questions created by users while revising their study materials. Around 1,700 students are registered on the platform, and since its launch it has been visited by nearly 19,000 people.

– Of course every user can send us feedback and suggestions for improvements, which we try to implement whenever possible. We have recently finished developing the option to add images to quizzes, and currently we are working not only on new features but also on improving the visual design of the website – adds Antoni Czaplicki.

Testownik is a web application, but it can easily be added to a phone’s home screen by installing a shortcut and used like a regular mobile application.

The application is available here.