Teaching Materials: Interactive Quizzes
Learn how to access Real Python’s interactive quizzes and how you can use them to check your learning progress.
Important Links:
00:00 The next content type I want to show you are our interactive Python quizzes. So, this is a bit of a Real Python specialty where we offer you interactive quizzes that you can complete anytime you want.
00:10 They’re kind of woven into our courses and also our written tutorials. Those are a great tool for you to check your learning progress and just to review what you’ve learned, and maybe also find some holes or some parts that you want to recap and study again, or dive deeper into them.
00:29 You can find the interactive quizzes either when they’re linked from a particular tutorial or course. They will just show up in the content with a link and you can jump to them, or, you can also find a list of all of our interactive quizzes by clicking on the Learn Python button and then selecting Interactive Quizzes and that will take you to the quizzes overview page. Now here, you’ll find a list of the quizzes that we currently have available, and we’re adding to them all the time. I want to show you how the quizzes work.
00:58 I’m just going to select one of our quizzes here. It’s the Splitting, Concatenating, and Joining Strings in Python quiz. So, once I click the quiz, I get some more information about the quiz: you can see how many questions are in there, who created the quiz, for example, and also how the scoring system works.
01:15 Let’s kick off the quiz with the first question. At the top here, you see a progress bar that’s going to show you how far along you are in the quiz. Then we’re jumping right into the question, and then the possible answers I can select here. So, this is a multiple-choice question right now, and I can select or unselect these items individually by clicking with the mouse, or I could also use the keyboard and with the Up Down keys and then also the Spacebar to select items.
01:44 So this is kind of a good way, as you’re more proficient with the quizzes, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and control everything with just the keyboard.
01:53 I’m just going to select everything here to show you how the answer system works. So here, I’m getting feedback on that particular question. All the items that I incorrectly selected, for example, get this little x and then ones I got right get this little checkmark.
02:10 Let’s move on to the next question. You can also see here that the progress bar completes as we’re answering these questions. So, once again, you know, this is a single-choice question, so I can only select one option here.
02:22 We’re going to move forward, and here’s another feature that I wanted to show you. So in this case, I got this question wrong. And what happens is that usually you’ll get a little section here that expands, that tells you how this question should be answered and why, and gives you a little bit more background information. In a lot of cases, it also includes a link back to a section of an article on Real Python where we can learn more about that particular topic.
02:46 I’m just going to make my way through this quiz. Once again, we have a slightly more complicated coding question here and, you know, didn’t get that one fully correct either. Let’s move on here because I wanted to show you this coding question.
03:01
So, we also have questions where we ask you to code up some Python and then evaluate that Python code. In this case here, I’m asked to write a function that is called expand, and it should take a list of strings, concatenate them, and return the resulting string repeated three times.
03:18 Here I see this example of what this function should do, and I can just place the cursor here and start programming this function with the signature first, and then what we want to return is the string joined together,
03:39 and then we want to repeat that three times. All right? So let’s see if I got that right. Okay. This was the correct answer and I’m getting the score for this question.
03:57 My score was 42%. Um, I could definitely do better, it’s just the first time I’m taking this quiz. A good way to maximize your learning with those quizzes is by taking them again and making sure you’re getting, you know, into the 90% scores, or 95%, or even 100%, because then you can be sure that you’ve covered all of the topics in the quiz.
04:19 You know, in this case, I would probably let it sit a little bit, do some research on this topic, and then come back and retake this quiz. You can retake a quiz at any time.
04:27 I’m going to complete this quiz once again.
04:38 All right, and as you can see, I got a little bit better this time. And as I re-complete this quiz over time, I’m going to get better and better at solving these string questions.
04:47 I got a little bronze medal here, and there is also silver and gold medals you can get depending on your score. So, this is a great way to test your learning and I recommend that once you complete a quiz, just let it sit for a while.
05:01 Maybe the next day, come back. After doing some more research, doing some more trial-and-error, coming back to the quiz, retaking it until you absolutely nail that particular quiz and get it correct.
05:13 You can also share your score on your favorite social network to challenge your friends and maybe brag a little bit. This is also a great way to keep motivation high and see how your group of friends is doing, or maybe share it with your coworkers and get them to take the quiz as well.
05:31 Don’t fret too much if your score is fairly low the first time you work through a quiz. That’s the whole idea, right? This is really meant as a learning progress check, and it’s meant as a way for you to see how far and how deeply you’ve gotten into a particular topic.
05:51 We’re always trying to structure these quizzes so that if you don’t get a question correct, there’s some kind of hint or some kind of explanation where we give you additional information and point you to the right courses and the right tutorials here in Real Python, so you can immediately dive into that particular topic or question or issue
06:11 and really, really understand, then, why the question was answered differently. All right, so those were our interactive quizzes. Like I said, you can find them either linked on an article or by clicking on the Interactive Quizzes button up here in the Learn Python menu.
KenyanPythonista on Jan. 16, 2020
My first day here , and am already loving the experience!!
I am transitioning from an IP/MPLS Networks Engineer to Network Automation/Devops engineer. Curious to be fluent as a Pythonista.
dungdh286 on Feb. 19, 2020
your voice very good but i think many people not good hear enligsh as read !Hope your vid add sub in future :>
Dan Bader RP Team on Feb. 19, 2020
Yep we’re planning to add a video subtitles this year! It’s high up on my todo list :)
Gabriel Machel O on March 30, 2020
Enjoying myself watching these videos
udemzchuks on March 31, 2020
good to find this here. i long to learn much more from realpython classes here. thanks for this.
Richpy on Feb. 8, 2023
Hello! I’m excited to learn these courses on Python. This year is all about learning new skills. The videos look interactive and I love the presentation as it brings back the beautiful memory of reading the comic characters. Best Regards to the amazing team of Real Python.
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RayRenz on Jan. 9, 2020
Hi! Would love to see these videos subbed.