Review by Melissa Powers, Common Sense Education | Updated November 2017

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Quizlet

Name: Quizlet
Item: Quizlet
Rating: 4
Author: Melissa Powers

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Flexible study aid supports learning at home, school, and on the go

Subjects & skills

Grades This grade range is a recommendation by Common Sense Education and not the developer/publisher.

6–12

Great for:

Formative Assessment

Common Sense says (See details)

Teachers say (89 Reviews)

Price: Free, Paid Free account supports eight classes but includes ads. Plus version ($19.99 per year) removes ads and allows unlimited classes. Plus accounts also include image uploading, voice recording, and full access to diagram set features. The $34.99/year Teacher version includes all Plus features, plus progress tracking, Quizlet Live customization, and faster access to Quizlet customer service. Purchase 2+ Teacher subscriptions at a time for 20% discount.

Platforms: Website

Take a look inside

5 images

Study diagrams from all subject areas. Browse, search, or create your own.

Quizlet Learn adapts to your responses, increasing difficulty as your accuracy improves.

Search through millions of public study sets. Study as-is or make a copy and remix it.

Creating a study set is simple with the auto-define feature. You can also add images and voice recordings.

Quizlet Live divides students into teams and allows them to collaborate and compete.

Pros: From personal study sessions to game show-style competition, Quizlet adapts to your situation.

Cons: May require extra teacher supervision/moderation; user-generated content isn't always reliable or appropriate.

Bottom Line: A quality study tool for learning and memorizing facts; extensions to support higher-level thinking would be a nice addition.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

If you need to memorize facts, Quizlet is your tool. Encourage students to use Quizlet on their own time as homework or to create their own custom flash card sets for Quizlet Live competitions in the classroom. You might also encourage your students to create flash card decks to share with the class; this could be a nice way to help students collaborate as they prepare for a cumulative exam or an AP test.

Unlike traditional flash cards, Quizlet could be a great study tool for subjects with a lot of visual or auditory content. Art and science teachers can create detailed diagrams or add supporting photos to data sets using their own images or with Quizlet's large pool of licensed Flickr photography. Music and foreign language teachers (with the Plus/Teacher subscription) can attach live audio recordings to flash cards.

In addition to review, Quizlet Live is also a great way to introduce new content. Because it requires students to collaborate with their teams to select the right answer, students can pool their collective knowledge to deduce the answers, or you can encourage them to do research as they play the game. As your students learn new information, push them to move toward higher-order thinking, using what they've learned from the flash cards to apply, analyze, question, and create. See our Teaching Strategies page, Make Formative Assessment More Student-Centered for tips.

What Is It?

Quizlet is an online database of over 150 million study sets created by students and teachers. Data sets include both text-based and visual study materials. The range of topics covered on Quizlet is pretty amazing. Students can remix existing sets or create their own. For each study set, Quizlet offers six to nine study activities, including matching and fill-in-the-blank games and timed quizzes. Adaptive learning technology helps students study effectively by offering more difficult questions as mastery increases.

While students can browse for study materials from users around the world, many teachers make and share custom study sets just for their classes. Verified Creators such as curriculum publishers and educational institutions also offer content on Quizlet. There are other great features for teachers, too, including Quizlet Live, a team-based quiz competition that turns study sets into a collaborative classroom quiz game. For $34.99 per year, the Teacher version offers student progress tracking and a variety of customization tools.

Is It Good for Learning?

Quizlet is super simple, but that's part of its appeal. Teachers and students can browse existing content or upload their own. Just like real flash cards that you make or borrow from a friend, quality can vary, but on the whole, the public content is pretty good. Quizlet is a good tool for any classroom. Not only does it work well on any device, including in offline mode on mobile devices, but it offers a variety of supports for ELLs and students with learning differences. You can click on a word or definition to hear it read aloud or attach voice recordings to flash cards (with Plus/Teacher upgrade). For visual learning, you can add images to definition cards or create custom diagrams.

Quizlet's new Learn mode takes data from millions of anonymous study sessions and uses study techniques to generate an adaptive study plan to improve learning. If students use Learn in addition to the timed games, they will likely stay engaged for longer than with traditional flash cards. Plus, students will enjoy competing for high scores in the timed study games and against classmates in Quizlet Live. At its core, Quizlet is a memorization tool, so its impact as a transformative learning tool is likely limited. But if you use Quizlet's many features thoughtfully, this is a worthy, flexible tool to add to your teacher tool belt.

Rating Details

Overall Rating

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Quizlet makes the monotonous task of memorizing facts as engaging as possible through audio and visual components, customized learning plans, and collaborative competition.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

The variety of study modes and the ability to create custom content helps students take ownership over their learning. While Quizlet won't engage higher-order thinking, it can be good for factual learning.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

With audio and visual enhancements, Quizlet offers excellent support for learners of all abilities. The Help Center is very thorough, but teachers should also visit the site blog for suggestions on using Quizlet in the classroom.

Common Sense Reviewer

Melissa Powers Educator

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Teacher Reviews

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Featured review by
Michael H. , Classroom teacher

Classroom teacher

Thorne Middle School
Port Monmouth, NJ

Great for Reviews/Studying

I think Quizlet is a great review tool and study guide for tests/quizzes, and I think the scatter portion is a great game for the kids to play that seems to get them engaged. I think an extra function that could be added is forcing students to use the terms in a sentence so that they develop a greater understanding of the terms meaning instead of just memorizing the definition by looking at it over and over.

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