10 interactive quiz styles to engage your audience

Polling l Q&A l Quiz Tips

Ben Waugh
by Ben Waugh
10 interactive quiz styles to engage your audience

Please note: All native participant apps (iOS and Android app stores) will need to be updated to see the new quiz leaderboard updates. 

Interactive quizzing can be used in many different ways, from setting the scene in a (virtual, hybrid or F2F) lecture or meeting with an icebreaker quiz to put everyone at ease, to running more intense quizzes to test knowledge throughout a session. Whatever the style of quiz you want to run, the live quiz should naturally fit into your online presentation without deterring from your content. It should complement your presentation and add value rather than being a last-minute, badly run quiz. No one wants a quiz that flops! 

If you want to run anonymous quizzes in mutiple recurring virtual classes or meetings, then consider how many times you should do this, from running quizzes every other week to just doing them in quarterly townhalls. Don't make it overkill for your audience! Here's a suggestion of some quiz styles for your inspiration: 

1. Trivia quizzes 

Trivia quizzes are great to test people on their general knowledge and to ask some fun fact questions based on popular culture topics. Here are some ideas for running live trivia quizzes:

Trivia Quiz with Vevox

  • Run a 'guess the movie quote' to see if people can recall lines from famous films 
  • ​See how much your audience knows about music, film or sport history with a fact test from well-known questions to some sneaky trick questions
  • Try a 'guess the song' quiz and play the audio to the short segment of a song to put people's listening skills to the test. These type of questions are great for adding a different dynamic to your anonymous quiz and testing another variant of the 5 sensors

2. Seasonal quizzes

Seasonal quizzes such as a Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's or a St Patrick's themed quiz contest really helps to bring the spirit of the celebration to life. As it's a current event and a topical thing that might be on everyone's mind, it really helps people to be in the mood for the quiz and to see how much they know about each celebration or event. An extra tip when running a live audience quiz with Vevox is to add customisable backgrounds to the Vevox Present View to bring your seasonal quiz to life. There are a range of themed template backgrounds within your Vevox dashboard to choose from to make it visually stand out! 

Halloween Quiz with Vevox

3. Challenging quizzes

If you really want to challenge your audience and to put their minds to the test, then a mastermind type quiz or Mensa IQ test can give even the best quizzers a chance to see how knowledgable they really are. If you do want to ease people into the quiz still, think about building up the difficulty level of each question, so it goes from hard to near impossible and extreme expert questions.  

Trivia Quiz with Vevox

4. A countdown quiz 

Inspired by 'who wants to a millionaire' and many other quiz shows, quiz questions that test your recall of knowledge and the speed of your answers can be a fun way to have a lightning quiz! To do this with Vevox, explain how long you will give your audience to answer the questions (e.g. 10 seconds), then open the quiz poll, read the question and close the quiz poll as soon as possible after reading the title so it tests the quick reactions of your audience. If you really want to set the atmosphere, then why not add some ongoing background music to create some more tension.  

Countdown Quiz with Vevox

5. Problem solving 

Brainteaser quizzes are great for testing another side to the brain as problem solving makes you think outside the box rather than recalling facts or just being a memory test. There are also several types of problem solving questions you ask from riddles, to mathematical or engineering based problems.  

Promblem Solving Virtual Quiz with Vevox

6. Competition time!

Host an actual quiz competition to give your audience extra motivation to participate and entice them with a reward for being on the top of the leaderboard. As explained in our '5 top tips for running an interactive quiz with Vevox', you do need to consider showing the leaderboard before you run the quiz and explaining how the scoring works so everyone knows from the outset. Simple rewards can provide an extra incentive for people to do their best in the quiz and to add some friendly competition. Cue the cheesy quiz lines "You've got to be in it, to win it!". 

Competition Virtual Quiz with Vevox

7. Icebreaker quizzes 

Quizzes can also be effective for 'breaking the ice' and used as a tool to make an introduction in a class or meeting. From silly random questions, to questions about the organisation or even questions about a particular person (e.g. 'What is Susan from accounts well-known nickname'), all of these quirky topics can help to build a safespace and strike up a mutual trust to share people's thoughts or questions. Using Vevox's digital Q&A alongside this helps to make the quiz much more a conversation and allows users to engage with their peers.  

Icebreaker Quiz with Vevox

8. The 'mock' exam test 

Quizzing can also be used to prepare students for their real examinations and to gauge average scores to see the performance level of the class at that moment in time. The fact that you can choose to run an anonymous quiz with Vevox also allows students to feel much more at ease without feeling too scared or pressured to perform in the test exam. This live test exam can help to uncover any potential pitfalls or challenging questions that students still get confused by. This can help to formulate the agenda for your revision seminar and workshops to give your students some extra confidence going into the exam season. 

Mock Exam Virtual Quiz with Vevox

9. Numerical quiz

Another exciting and different way to run a quiz is to purely run questions that are based on numerical or statistcal answers. This quiz style can either be used to test the audience's mathematical skills or to see if they can use problem solving to identify the correct answer.
For instance the question 'what was the average wage in 1960 in the United States of America?' Is it: 1. $1503, 2. $4007,  3. $9,810, 4. $17,0850. This question makes the audience think about what the earnings might have been around that period of time and to make a guesstimation based on the knowledge they have, rather than simply making calculations. Oh and the answer is 2. $4007 for those of you who just couldn't bare to know the answer!  

Mathematical and Numerical Virtual Quiz with Vevox

10. Geographical quiz

Personally, I love a geographical and world quiz! These quizzes can be used to ask many different types of questions from testing people on their knowledge of capital cities to their knowledge of geographical culture and general world trivia. World quizzes are great for enabling people to learn about different cultures and to learn things about their peers, such as their favorite holiday destinations or about their heritage. You can use Vevox’s Q&A alongside anonymous quizzing to create this inclusive and interactive dialogue to make your session much more a discussion!

Geography Virtual Quiz with Vevox

Searching for even more quiz inspiration? Then why not sign up for free to try one of our ready-made quizzes to use with Vevox, the number 1 rated audience quizzing app

Want to have a demo of the interactive and anonymous quizzing app in action? Then get in touch with us. 

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