Hello again, and happy Fall Equinox! 🍂 Sorry for sending out the newsletter later than usual. Here’s the latest news about ChemQuiz.net:
- *NEW* Topics feature to help organize assignments
- *NEW* easy-to-read periodic table handout!
- Webinar about Topics, Rubrics and more on Tuesday, September 30th at 7pm ET/4pm PT
- Bug fixes and other improvements
- Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard
*NEW* Topics for organizing assignments!
Just about every other LMS out there allows you to organize your assignments by topics or units so that they’re easier for students to find and complete, so it was past time for me to add similar functionality to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard. Starting today, you can organize your assignments using the new Topics feature!
To create a new topic, just go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on Assignments in the top menu, and then click on the new Topics submenu:
Then, click on the pink “Create a Topic” button to display the form that allows you to enter the topic name, description, and sort order, as well as choose which assignments are associated with that topic. You can also choose whether the topic is “collapsible” with the +/– link, like on the Exemplars page, or if it’s expanded and visible all the time.
Here’s an example of a what it would look like for students in a class that’s currently on “Unit 2” and moved those assignments to the top of the page but has left “Unit 1” available in case students want to review or retake those assignments:
To expand the “Unit 1: Atomic Structure and Properties” topic, a student would just have to click on the pink + link, and all of the assignments in that topic will be displayed.
You can also modify the order of the topics and their associated assignments on the Change Display Order page:
Simply drag and drop the topics into the order in which you’d like them to be displayed to your students and click the pink “Save Assignment Order” button at the bottom of the page! You can also move an assignment to another topic by dragging it under the new topic. Here’s a screenshot where I’m moving the “Unit 2” topic:
I’m hoping that drag-and-drop functionality is more intuitive than the dropdown menus on the Topics and Assignments pages, but you can always use those as well. I recommend checking out how your assignments will look to your students by using the Student View page:
I’ve also added an instructional page on the new Topics feature to the ChemQuiz.net Documentation with more explanations, details, and screenshots.
Thanks to Darlene, a longtime ChemQuiz.net user (back to the teacher blog days!), for this great suggestion! Please let me know if you have any questions about or come across any issues while using the new Topics feature.
New easy-to-read periodic table handout!
At the start of this new school year, I was searching for a clean and simple periodic table for my Chemistry students that was easy to read with a fixed-width serif font that was dyslexia-friendly and clearly differentiated between lowercase L, uppercase i, and 1. I don’t know if you go through this issue with your students, but I was tired of mine thinking that chlorine is a compound made of carbon and iodine. 😂
I couldn’t quite find what I wanted from the many freely available periodic tables that were already out there, so I decided to make my own! Here’s what it looks like:
I decided on the “Consolas” font (which is coincidentally the same font I use to code the site!), and I kept the design as clean and simple as possible so that it would be easy to read even after being run off on a neglected copier in a public school. The atomic masses are the latest values from IUPAC, and I made three versions with different precisions and posted them on the ChemQuiz.net Handouts page:
Since the periodic tables are public Google Docs, they’re easy to download as PDFs or Word documents. If you use Google Drive or any app that can edit Word docs, you can make a copy and modify it however you’d like – change the font, add colors, remove the logo, whatever! Please note that I used the official IUPAC spellings for elements #13 (“aluminium”) and #55 (“caesium”), so you can decide whether you’d like to keep them that way or Americanize them.
Thanks so much to my longtime colleague Chris (no relation 😆) for his suggestions and proofreading!
Webinar Tuesday, Sep. 30 @ 7pm ET/4pm PT
Thanks to everyone who attended the first ever ChemQuiz.net webinar last month – I had a blast! I also got some great feedback from the attendees, and it was nice meeting new people while also putting faces to names that I’ve only known through email for the last several years.
Since the last webinar went pretty well (in spite of me completely forgetting how to use Zoom about five minutes before it started 😅), I’ve scheduled another live webinar for Tuesday, September 30th at 7pm Eastern Time/4pm Pacific Time on Zoom! Based on feedback from the last session, I’m going to focus on how to use the new Topics feature as well as Rubrics and some other advanced features of the more popular quizzes and the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard. There will also be time for a Q&A session at the end, just like last time.
Please use this link to register for the webinar in advance:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WHTPZtwBR–g6DXgS181jg
After registering, you should receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. I hope to see you there!
Bug fixes & other improvements
In addition to the new Topics feature and periodic table handout, I’ve made the following improvements and bug fixes across ChemQuiz.net:
Dashboard (these also apply to PhysQuiz.net!)
- new feature: added Topics to help organize assignments (thanks, Darlene!)
- enhancement: assignments can now be created without assigning a target if “require login” is deselected (thanks, Kenneth!)
- bug fix: some quiz options were being overwritten for some quizzes on Assignments page (e.g., “Quiz Type” for Naming Compounds Quiz) (thanks Mark, Andrea, and Kristy!)
- bug fix: selected question banks were being wiped out when assignment was edited (thanks, Darlene & James!)
- bug fix: internal quiz settings were being displayed on the page as code (thanks, Brian!)
- bug fix: Dashboard Home page would crash if a current assignment was not assigned to any classes or students
- bug fix: any checked class and student checkboxes were being cleared when there was an unrelated error with creating an assignment
- bug fix: I accidentally deleted all the “Atoms” exemplar assignments for about 20 minutes (this is why I make regular backups 🤦🏻♂️)
- bug fix: quiz was scoring some correct answers as incorrect (thanks, Shauna!)
- correction: Lewis structure for OF2 was missing unbonded electron pairs around oxygen (thanks, Heidi!)
- bug fix: correct answer count was accidentally being doubled when correct sig figs were required in answers (thanks, Susan & Val!)
- bug fix: directions at top of quiz told students to round to three sig figs even if correct sig figs were required (thanks again, Val!)
Molecular Geometry & VSEPR Quiz
- bug fix: quiz was asking questions about electron domains for AX1 molecules (thanks, Claire!)
- bug fix: quiz was not scoring “reaction type” questions with double beta, double positron, double neutron, and double electron capture correctly (thanks, Lance!)
Photoelectron Spectroscopy (PES) Quiz
- new feature: added “a mix of both” option for x-axis direction in PES diagrams (thanks again, Susan!)
Other improvements
- new feature: added 0.001, 0.01, and 0.1 precision periodic tables to the Handouts page
- enhancement: purchased additional CPUs and increased the maximum number of PHP processes so that the site loads faster
Thanks so much to everyone who has sent in a suggestion or reported a bug! You continue to help me improve the site, so if you come across any problems or issues while using ChemQuiz.net, please fill out this short Contact form and I’ll do my best to fix it as quickly as I can. The AP CS A book is done and moving to production today 🥳, so for everyone who has submitted a bug report recently, I can finally turn my attention back to the site and those issues should be fixed soon!
Site licenses for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard
Thank you to everyone who has renewed or purchased a new site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard for the 2025-2026 school year! Site licenses are how I pay for web hosting and security software, and for the software I use to write the quizzes. It also keeps the website ad-free – I personally think it’s wrong for educational websites show ads to children, so I’ll never do it.
If you’re considering purchasing a site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, now’s a great time to do it! With an active site license, you can:
- create assignments for your students using the quizzes on the site
- select the options you want that best match your students’ needs, including advanced options such as requiring correct sig figs in answers
- allow your students to save their progress as they’re working on an assignment
- build exams from multiple assignments
- create custom question banks with your own questions and images or use questions shared by the ChemQuiz.net educator community
- use the “tab switch detection” anti-cheating feature
- review results with your students so they can correct misconceptions and grasp concepts more quickly
- track your students’ progress and download results for data analysis
- create custom rubrics to score assignments
If you’d like to purchase a 12-month site license for just US$70, you can do so in any of the following ways:
- credit card through Square (the most popular option)
- school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote!)
- CashApp, PayPal, or Venmo at chris@chemquiz.net or @ChemQuizDotNet
Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for 50% off at just US$35 per school.
If your school offers physics, you can also bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$35 more!
Site licenses also make it possible for me to make the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard free for the 207 U.S. public schools whose students are economically disadvantaged. If you teach in a high poverty public school in the United States (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), just send me a link to the supporting documentation and you’ll get a free site license for the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard forever – PhysQuiz.net, too!
Help me share ChemQuiz.net with the world!
If you like using ChemQuiz.net, there are three quick and easy things that you can do to help me promote the site!
- Add your school to the growing list of supporters on the About page! Simply go to the ChemQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, activate the box next to “Display School on ChemQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.
- Tell another Chemistry teacher about ChemQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
- Follow @ChemQuizDotNet on BlueSky 🦋 and share my updates with your fellow Chemistry teachers!
If you noticed that the site was running slowly earlier this month, I apologize – ChemQuiz.net has become a lot more popular since last school year! The site is currently averaging around 20,000 unique visitors on weekdays, and there have been over 112 million visits in September so far. The Significant Figures Quiz alone has amassed 5.5 million visits just in the past three weeks! 😱 I increased the number of CPUs and made some other performance tweaks, so I’m hoping that will help keep the site chugging along when it gets busy.
Thanks again for your support of ChemQuiz.net! Please feel free to contact me any time using the Contact form or by emailing me at chris@chemquiz.net if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. I hope you all make it through the fall sports season and Homecoming drama with your wits intact!
-Chris