How to Create a Quiz for Your Presentation

Why quizzes work in presentations

A well-placed quiz question does something passive content can't: it makes the audience recall information rather than just receive it. Retrieval practice — the act of pulling information from memory — is one of the most reliably effective learning techniques. Even a single quiz question mid-presentation improves retention of the surrounding content.

For non-educational presentations, quizzes also work as engagement mechanics. A curiosity-gap question ("Before I tell you the answer — what do you think?") creates investment in the answer. Audiences who guessed wrong are more attentive to the explanation than those who were told the answer without being asked first.

Setting up a live quiz

Create your quiz questions on rifts.to before your presentation. Use multiple choice format for quiz questions — it's the fastest to answer and the easiest to evaluate. Include a correct answer and two or three plausible distractors.

Display the QR code on your slide. Your audience fills in the anonymous form — no app, no account. The results show you the distribution of answers in real time. You can reveal results immediately or build suspense by narrating what you're seeing as responses come in.

Writing good quiz questions

Test application, not just recall. "Which of these correctly applies the principle we just discussed?" is more useful than "What is the definition of X?" Application questions reveal whether the concept was understood, not just heard.

Make distractors genuinely plausible. Wrong options that are obviously wrong don't test anything. The best wrong answers are things people commonly believe or logical-sounding misapplications of the concept. If everyone gets it right, you've confirmed they understood — that's also useful data.

Using results as a teaching moment

When a significant portion of the audience picks a wrong answer, that's your most valuable teaching moment of the session. Don't just announce the right answer — explain why the popular wrong answer is wrong. This directly addresses the most common misconception in the room.

When most of the audience gets it right, acknowledge it and move on. Dwelling on confirmed understanding wastes time. The value is in surfacing what the room doesn't know, not confirming what it does.