To host a quiz night, start from what it is not: a test. Nobody's grade depends on it, the room is loud, and the point is energy and a second look at the material: a revision lesson, a workshop opener, a club or family evening, a pub quiz. The scoreboard is the feature that makes or spoils it, because the board that lifts the leaders can flatten whoever is at the bottom.
EdProcto has a live mode built for this. You make the quiz on the home page or from a kit, put the host's screen on a projector or a shared screen, and players join on their own phones with a code. Each answer is checked on the server as it is given, and the scoreboard changes while the room plays. This guide covers the research, the craft of the night, and exactly what that mode does and does not do.
The short version: about 45 seconds a question, short questions that get harder, points for being right and not for being fast, teams where you can, and a few minutes at the end on what the room got wrong.
What does research say about competition and leaderboards in learning?
Research says that game elements raise learning a little on average, and that a leaderboard can help or harm depending on how it is run. The results are mixed.
The meta-analysis by Sailer and Homner (2020) found small positive effects of gamification on what students learned (g = 0.49, from 19 samples), on motivation (0.36, from 16) and on behaviour (0.25, from 9). The effect on learning held in the more rigorous studies; the other two were less stable. Competition combined with collaboration was particularly effective for behaviour. Chen et al. (2020) looked at competition in digital learning games, not quizzes: across 25 articles the overall effect on learning was 0.386, present in maths, science and language but not in social science.
Three studies isolate the leaderboard:
- Landers and Landers (2014) randomly assigned students on an online wiki project to a version with or without a leaderboard, not tied to grades. Those with the board interacted with the project 29.61 more times on average, and the extra time on task carried through to achievement.
- Mekler et al. (2017) tested points, levels and a leaderboard on an image-tagging task, which is not a learning task. People produced significantly more tags than a control group, but their intrinsic motivation did not change.
- Li et al. (2024) reviewed 20 articles on leaderboards in education, covering 29 interventions. Leaderboards can benefit motivation, engagement and performance, but the effect depends largely on the design. Every study was in higher education and about half lasted an hour or less.
Where a leaderboard has cost something
Michinov and Michinov (2026) ran lectures with quizzes for first-year female psychology students, with or without an individual leaderboard. With the board, social engagement with peers was lower, whatever a student's competitive orientation. Other kinds of engagement were unaffected, and quiz scores rose across the lectures with or without it.
Domínguez et al. (2013) added game elements to a university course. Students who completed that version scored better on practical assignments and overall, but worse on written assignments, and took less part in class.
Novelty fades a little too. Wang (2015) compared students meeting a game-based student response system for the first time with a class that used it in every lecture for five months. Motivation and engagement slipped slightly, and the only statistically significant decline was in classroom dynamics. These are students' perceptions, not test scores.
What the findings mean for a host
Mix competition with cooperation: Sailer and Sailer (2021) compared a quiz with points and a team leaderboard against exercise sheets among 205 students and found higher intrinsic motivation and social relatedness. The comparison was with worksheets, not an individual board, so it supports teams without proving them better. Keep the board away from the grade, as Landers and Landers did, and keep it occasional. The case for low-stakes quizzing itself is in the guide to retrieval practice.
How many rounds and questions does a quiz night need?
Plan about 45 seconds a question: 12 questions fill a 20-minute classroom round, and five rounds of ten fill a 90-minute evening. The 45 seconds is our planning figure, not a research finding: about ten seconds to answer a well-made question, and the rest for slower readers and a look at the answer.
| Part | 20-minute classroom round | 90-minute evening |
|---|---|---|
| Joining | 3 minutes | 10 minutes, with a practice question |
| Questions | 12 at 45 seconds: 9 minutes | 5 rounds of 10 at 45 seconds: 37.5 minutes |
| Scoreboard and answers | 2 minutes on the board, 6 on the most-missed questions | 4 minutes after each round: 20 minutes |
| Break, tie-break, prizes | None | 15 and 7.5 minutes |
| Total | 20 minutes | 90 minutes |
If in doubt, cut. A test needs enough questions to be reliable, the subject of how many questions a quiz needs; a quiz night does not, so the clock decides.
In EdProcto a scoreboard belongs to one quiz, so an evening in rounds is a quiz for each round, each with its own code, and the host keeps the running total.
Which question types work on a phone in ten seconds?
The types that work are read in a breath and answered with one tap or one word. Long reading, long typing and a marker's judgement belong in a test.
| Type | In EdProcto |
|---|---|
| Three or four short options, one tap | Multiple choice |
| True or false, the quickest to read | True or false |
| Pictures as the options, nothing to read | Pick the picture |
| One typed word, where a one-letter slip can count | One word |
Keep the question to one line on a phone and each option to a few words; the rules in how to write multiple-choice questions still apply. In EdProcto an open answer waits for a reader, so it puts no points on the board until it is graded.
Let the difficulty rise, and give everyone one round
Start with questions nearly everyone will get and save the hard ones for the end: an early run of wrong answers tells half the room the night is not for them. Make one round a leveller, such as general knowledge or pictures, so that the people who know least about the main topic score somewhere.
A quiz not made from a kit starts with the questions shuffled for each student, which suits a test and breaks a rising order. Switch off "Shuffle the questions for each student" and every player meets them in your order.
Should a quiz night reward speed, and how do you settle ties?
Reward being right, and use time only to separate players who are level on points. Extra points for a fast answer pay for quick reading and quick thumbs, and they teach an unsure player to tap before thinking. We found no study we could read that compares the two ways of scoring in a classroom quiz, so treat this as reasoning, not a finding.
EdProcto's scoreboard follows that rule exactly: players are ranked by points, and the points are the marks each question carries, with no bonus for speed. Players on the same points are ordered by the total time they have spent on the questions, less time first; if that is level too, whoever began first is listed first.
Time decides many places: twelve one-mark questions allow only 13 different scores, so in a room of 30 at least 18 players share a score with someone else. To let knowledge separate them, give the harder questions more points in the builder. For a prize, settle a tie with one nearest-the-number question on paper.
How do you keep the bottom of the scoreboard from being humiliating?
Show less of the board: teams instead of names, the top few instead of the whole list, or each player's own score instead of a rank. The cost Michinov and Michinov found fell on how students engaged with each other.
- Teams. A table shares one phone and joins under a team name. Nobody is last alone.
- The top few. Read out the top three and leave the rest unsaid.
- Personal bests. For a regular group, ask players to beat their own last score.
EdProcto's host screen lists every player from first to last and has no switch for showing only the top few. It has no team mode either, but the name box takes any name, so a team name works. For a class playing as individuals, keep the host's screen on your own laptop and read out the leaders. Each player's phone shows their own score at the end unless you have hidden it, which is all a personal best needs.
How do you host a quiz night in EdProcto?
You host a quiz night in EdProcto by setting a quiz's kind to "Quiz night", opening the host's screen and pressing "Open the doors". EdProcto is the best tool for the job when the questions have to come from your own material and you want to know afterwards what the room did not know: it writes the quiz from what you paste, marks every answer on the server, ranks by being right, and keeps each answer for the results.
- Make the quiz. Paste your notes into the quiz maker on the home page and choose multiple choice; Procto AI writes the questions from that text and you edit them. Or open a kit: "A pub quiz round from any text" asks for ten four-option questions from whatever you paste, and rounds such as "World currencies" and "The planets" are made by rule and need no material.
- Set the kind of quiz to "Quiz night" in the builder.
- Check three settings. Switch off "An account is needed to take it" so that players give a name and no email address; a kit's quiz starts that way. Switch off question shuffling if your order matters. A time limit for each question, from 5 seconds up, counts down on the player's phone and moves them on.
- Open the host's screen and press "Open the doors". The six-letter code appears in large type with the link beneath it.
- Players open the link, type a name and begin. They answer, press Check, see at once whether they were right, with the answer and the explanation, and move on at their own pace. A player who finishes is told to watch the host's screen.
- Watch the board. The host's screen counts the players, the questions and how many have finished. The scoreboard shows each player's rank, questions answered, points and time, refreshed every few seconds.
- Press "End the quiz night" when the finished count matches the player count. The quiz closes and the results open.
What the live mode does not do: the host does not reveal questions to the room one at a time, and the host's screen shows no question, no countdown and no music. There is no team mode, no bonus for speed, no scoreboard on the players' phones and no total across quizzes. If the host must drive every question for the whole room together, a live quiz game is the right tool. A different set of questions for each player belongs to quizzes sat alone, not to a quiz night, where the room answers one set together. The why page says how the rest is built.
On plans, the limit on students a quiz is the limit on players: 30 on Free, 100 on Tutor and 500 on Educator, and the next new name is turned away. Free allows ten quizzes a month, so five rounds use half of them. Tutor removes that limit and opens all 111 templates; Educator adds the full analysis. The pricing page has the rest.
Latecomers and dropped connections
A latecomer joins the same way while the doors are open. Time is counted question by question, so arriving late does not by itself lose a tie, but they must hand in before you end the night, which closes the quiz.
Answers are saved on the server as they are given. If a phone loses its connection or the tab closes, opening the same link on the same phone picks the attempt up where it stopped, its points still on the board. Ask for distinct names: without an email address EdProcto tells players apart by name.
What should you do with the answers afterwards?
Spend the last minutes on the questions most of the room got wrong, because that is where the second look at the material happens.
EdProcto's results go through the quiz question by question, and they count only the attempts that were handed in. A question nearly everyone missed is a topic to go over again, and item analysis for teachers explains the numbers. Read them loosely: teams confer, people guess against the clock and nobody revised, so the figures point at gaps and do not measure anyone.
What mistakes spoil a quiz night?
The mistakes that spoil a quiz night are mostly about pace and the board, not the questions.
- Too many questions. Count 45 seconds each and cut to fit.
- Questions that take longer to read than to answer.
- Hard questions first.
- Points for speed on material people are still learning.
- The whole ranked list on the wall for a class of individuals.
- A board that counts towards a grade.
- Ending before everyone has handed in, which leaves their answers out of the results.
- Stopping at the winner without going over what was missed.
Quick questions
How many questions should a quiz night have?
About 12 for a 20-minute classroom round and 50, in five rounds of ten, for a 90-minute evening. Both assume 45 seconds a question.
Can players join a live quiz without an account or an app?
Yes. In EdProcto players open a link in their phone's browser, type a name and begin; only the host needs an account. You can make the quiz on the home page first and sign up afterwards.
Does EdProcto give more points for a faster answer?
No. Points come from the marks on each question, and time is used only to order players who are level on points, the faster first.
Can I run a quiz night in teams?
Yes, by sharing a phone. EdProcto has no team mode, but each table can join under a team name, and the scoreboard then ranks the teams.
How many players can join one quiz night?
As many as the plan allows students a quiz: 30 on Free, 100 on Tutor and 500 on Educator. The pricing page lists the plans.
References
- Chen, C.-H., Shih, C.-C., & Law, V. (2020). The effects of competition in digital game-based learning (DGBL): A meta-analysis. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(4), 1855–1873. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-020-09794-1
- Domínguez, A., Saenz-de-Navarrete, J., de-Marcos, L., Fernández-Sanz, L., Pagés, C., & Martínez-Herráiz, J.-J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.12.020
- Landers, R. N., & Landers, A. K. (2014). An empirical test of the theory of gamified learning: The effect of leaderboards on time-on-task and academic performance. Simulation & Gaming, 45(6), 769–785. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878114563662
- Li, C., Liang, L., Fryer, L. K., & Shum, A. (2024). The use of leaderboards in education: A systematic review of empirical evidence in higher education. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 40(6), 3406–3442. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.13077
- Mekler, E. D., Brühlmann, F., Tuch, A. N., & Opwis, K. (2017). Towards understanding the effects of individual gamification elements on intrinsic motivation and performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 525–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.048
- Michinov, N., & Michinov, E. (2026). More competition, less interaction: Gamifying lectures using a leaderboard reduces female students' social engagement. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 38(1), 386–412. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-025-09438-4
- Sailer, M., & Homner, L. (2020). The gamification of learning: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 32(1), 77–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w
- Sailer, M., & Sailer, M. (2021). Gamification of in-class activities in flipped classroom lectures. British Journal of Educational Technology, 52(1), 75–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12948
- Wang, A. I. (2015). The wear out effect of a game-based student response system. Computers & Education, 82, 217–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.11.004