Automatic Quizzing

There are three ways to using automatic quizzes and practice:

•	Anyone can practice on their own.
•	Teachers can assign practice drills for a grade.
•	Teachers can assign quizzes for a grade.

Also teachers can download the entire question bank to use in their own lessons and tests.

Levels

Recommended for grades 5 - 12.
Foolacies are organized into 4 levels of difficulty:

When you do the self-practice quiz, it assumes you are an adult, so it uses the full range of questions from easy to difficult, including mature topics.

As a teacher when you give assignments, it adjusts for age level. Level 1 starts with easy foolacies and easy examples appropriate for young students. Then each level adds more foolacies, and also the questions get more difficult and more mature. For example, Straw Man is introduced in level 1 with simple examples; then each level it is repeated with more difficult questions. (When you look at each foolacy page, it shows different examples based on which level you selected.)

This type of critical thinking is a difficult skill to maintain, so fallacies should be taught every year.

Multiple Choice

It shows students an argument, then they identify which foolacy was used from multiple choice. Some questions are to identify the definition, or ask a concept question.

This is simply an exercise to learn basic skills, like training wheels. Of course teachers should extend this critical thinking to discussions and reading, beyond just the quizzes here.

Outside the classroom, the goal is to detect bad arguments of all kinds. Distinguishing which foolacy is just an exercise, not the end goal.

Self Practice

On the List of Fallacies, select your Level and click Quiz Me.

This shows example arguments for you to pick which foolacy it is (multiple choice). Then it explains the answer and keeps drilling you. It keeps track of which foolacies you’ve mastered and shows a progress meter. It starts with a few foolacies and progressively adds more as you master them.

It uses a cookie to remember you, so when you return later it remembers what you’ve already mastered.

Student Access

Students do not need to login. Students can do self-study, or teachers can give them assignments through their LMS or by giving them a link.

If siblings or classmates share the same device, they can select their name from a list. Note: There is no password required, so mischievous students could look at each others’ answers if sharing the same device.

Teacher Login

Teachers can assign quizzes or practice drills for their students, then you can see their scores, answers, and class averages. You can also load scores into your LMS.

Login using your email and a password.

You do not need to enter students or classes, and students do not need to login. Instead students access Foolacy through your LMS, or you can manually give students a link.

LMS Integration

LMS integration is recommended so it automatically loads the scores into your gradebook. Otherwise you must manually enter scores.

See LMS Help

Create an Assignment

•	Click New Assignment.
•	Choose Which Foolacies to cover.
•	Select Practice Drill or Quiz.
•	Optionally add a Label to help you distinguish different assignments for different classes or dates.
•	Click Preview or Save.
•	If you accessed this from your LMS, it will put the assignment in your LMS. Otherwise click Copy Link and give it to your students. Each assignment has a different link.

Practice Drill is just like Self Practice, except you can see student scores, and you can narrow it to small sets of foolacies. It keeps drilling until the student gets at least three correct for each foolacy. (Some of them must be answered correctly two in a row, so progress may back-step if they are guessing randomly.) Drills are to teach, not test, so it gives explanations and lets students review the example screens. Students will get 100% if they complete the drill, less if they quit early.

Quiz is for testing. Everyone gets the same questions, but the order and choices are shuffled. If you select “Show answers after done” students will see their graded quiz with the answer key after they finish, or the next time they visit the site (if they have cookies set). Otherwise select “Don't show answers yet” to wait for the whole class to finish. (There is no way to prevent students from opening the definitions in another browser tab.)

Select Which Foolacies to cover; these come in predefined sets. Subsets cover only 4-7 foolacies, with 3 quiz questions each. Reviews cover 12-33 foolacies, with 1 quiz question each. (Practice drills always have at least 3 questions each, usually more for mistakes.) This totals 10 practices and 10 quizzes (for upper high school or college, fewer for younger students), so it’s a full unit. (I recommend you spread it out over the year, like vocabulary, so it’s not learned-and-burned all at once.)

Select LMS access only to prevent students from accessing it in ways that do not send scores back to your LMS. Select Allow direct link if you just want to give your students a link without importing scores into your LMS. Each assignment can be different, so a quiz may require LMS while a practice drill might be a direct link without a grade.

Your main dashboard lists all your assignments. Click one to change settings, view the status and responses of each student, and see class averages for each foolacy.

Note: It does not know your class roster. It simply lists students who have started the assignment, using the name they provided. If you want different classes to be listed separately, create a separate assignment for each class.

Politics

It does not show any political arguments for Level 1-2 quizzes and homework. For Level 3 it shows some politics, but not hot-button issues. Level 4 includes hot-button issues.

Note: You must assign quizzes or homework for it to filter political issues. If you just tell students to go to foolacy.com without a special link, it assumes they are adults.

The app shows an equal number of conservative and liberal examples on average. This is true even if the database has an unequal number of examples; however, there are corner-cases where the results are skewed, so currently we need more suggestions of flawed liberal arguments to improve the balance. Remember that foolacies are bad arguments, so it shows one side attacking the other to make them look bad, but then it identifies the flaw in their argument, so both sides look bad in a sense. It is important for everyone to identify the foolacies in their own side’s arguments as well as their opponents’.

Download Questions

You can download the whole database of example arguments. These are available as a public resource to use in any curriculum and tests. Login and click Download. It produces a CSV spreadsheet.

Note: Students might pose as a teacher to download the questions and try to memorize them all, but there are almost a thousand questions, so this is unlikely. Besides, memorizing is mostly learning, so ha!

Please contribute your own examples to this question bank to benefit everyone and make cheating even harder.

Troubleshooting

“In Homework the progress meter doesn’t advance or it goes backwards.”

That is normal. The algorithm tries to measure actual learning, otherwise students would just click randomly until they eventually got 100%. (The self-practice meter moves differently than the homework meter.)

“Student listed twice for same assignment”

That happens when the student uses different browsers or deletes cookies. There is no login, so it creates a new student record. Just use the most recent score.

“How do I change/correct a student’s name?”

Names are not editable. Instead, ask the student to select “Someone Else” when prompted to created a new student record with their correct name.

I don’t have a support staff, but I will try to answer your questions:

[email protected]

Privacy Policy

I do not share user data with anyone or any entity. And there are no paid or targeted ads (just the sample ads for educational purposes). The only personal information collected is teacher email, student name, and birth year. The only email sent is password-reset links for teachers. It uses a cookie to remember student progress.