Nearpod vs. Kahoot

Nearpod and Kahoot! are similar digital tools that allow users to create interactive presentations, assessments, content and other activities. However, there are several differences that are significant to formative assessments and designing and using them well. As such, the following comparison reflects select relevant points of comparison.

Accessibility

While both tools are relatively accessible to users, Nearpod has more accessibility features than Kahoot!. Firstly, Nearpod has both built-in accessible features and increased accessibility features with third-party integrations. For instance, Nearpod integrates with Microsoft Immersive Reader, which supports students’ access to Nearpod content (Nearpod Team, 2023) by allowing them to, for example, increase text size, translate over 60 languages, provide audio-based options, word pronunciation support and text highlighting. Similarly, Kahoot! offers some of the same accessibility features (Kahoot! Help Centre, n.d.-b.) and other ones, including scalable text, alternative text on images and a high contrast theme. However, according to their own webpage about meeting accessibility standards (Kahoot! Help Centre, n.d.-b.), Kahoot! appears to not have met Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (Henry, 2024) ^[1] 2.1 standards and there is no mention of the WCAG 2.2. standards, which are the latest set of standards. In contrast, Nearpod monitors their progress with accessibility by using a variety of policies and templates, namely the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, which includes incorporation of the WCAG, including version 2.1 and 2.2 (Nearpod Help Centre, n.d.) . While it is not explicitly stated that these standards have been met, it is clear that there is a more robust process of maintaining accessibility with Nearpod compared to Kahoot!.

Professional development

Both Nearpod and Kahoot! offer professional development events for educators and certification programs for their respective digital tools. Nearpod has a more extensive library of resources (Nearpod Team, 2024; Grider, 2024) than Kahoot!. As well, all of their pre-made content is available to users of all levels; Kahoot! keeps some pre-made content exclusive to paid users. Also, Kahoot! does not appear to have any live webinars, on-demand webinars, extensive how-to tutorials, tips and tricks on their blog or private learning communities, all of which Nearpod provides. Instead, there is the Kahoot! Academy (Kahoot!, n.d.-b.), which is a public platform for educators, learners and educational professionals that includes ready-made content and other helpful resources. There are also options for free and paid users to use team mode (Woods, 2021), which groups individuals users into teams to engage with competition-based content and workspaces (Kahoot! Help Center, n.d.-a.), where teachers can collaborate with each other on Kahoot activities, reports. Users of Kahoot! can apply to become verified creators who can sell their learning resources. This option could increase motivation for teachers to produce high quality content (Çekiç & Bakla, 2021). However, parts of all aforementioned collaboration options in Kahoot are only available to paid users.

Formative assessments

There are a variety of formative assessments on both Kahoot! and Nearpod. For this reason, they are both suitable digital tools for enhancing formative assessment use, making assessments interactive and developing assessment literacy in terms of design and alignment with instruction and activities. Where they differ, however, is in versatility and assessment type options. Nearpod has more and more versatile assessments that users can combine and use as launching pads for discussions. For instance, Nearpod has open-ended questions, discussions (i.e., Collaborate Board) and fill-in-the-blanks formative assessments (Nearpod, n.d.) while Kahoot! does not have these features. These assessments can be used as segues into other types of assessments, into small group discussions or even presentations. In contrast, Kahoot! has multi-select questions, short answers and sorting formative assessments (Kahoot!, n.d.-a.) while Nearpod does not. These assessments could be used to meet more diverse student learning needs. However, the latter two formative assessments are only accessible to paid users. As well, different question types in Kahoot! (Emtech ecsd, 2022) are also available only to paid users. However, there is a library of quizzes that Kahoot users can search through.

Nonetheless, both Nearpod and Kahoot! have teacher and student-paced options, which offer users of either or both platforms to use formative assessments in creative ways and highlights their feedback affordances. One advantage Nearpod has over Kahoot! is the availability of real-time data (Stephens, 2024), which allows teachers in particular to check for understanding and make adjustments to their content, lessons and activities to help students meet learning goals and access all learning content. One advantage Kahoot! has over Nearpod is that Kahoot! formative assessment reports (Hanif, 2020) include actionable insights such as which students need help and which students did not finish the assessment.

Nearpod vs. Peardeck

Below is a comprehensive video that compares Nearpod to Peardeck on numerous fronts, including a variety of formative assessments, teacher feedback and add-on capabilities:

References

Çekiç, A., & Bakla, A. (2021). A review of digital formative assessment tools: Features and future directions. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching, 8(3), 1459-1485.

Emtech ecse (2022, June 19). Exploring different question types in Kahoot Premium. [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPyoX9EM4wo&list=PLe8tTlhDRH6HNDfIDgrkyvQSGV0pAgz3C&index=5&ab_channel=Emtechecsd

Grider, C. (2024, March 15). How to find free high-quality lessons and teaching resources. Nearpod. https://nearpod.com/blog/quality-lessons-teaching-resources/

Hanif, O. (2020, May 6). Powerful analytics in new, free Kahoot! reports take formative assessment to the next level. Kahoot!. https://kahoot.com/blog/2020/05/06/analytics-new-free-kahoot-reports-formative-assessment/

Henry, S.L. (Ed.). (2024, March 7). WCAG 2 overview. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

Kahoot!. (n.d.-a.). Formative assessment | Web-based tools to assess learning. https://kahoot.com/schools/assessment/

Kahoot! (n.d.-b.). Kahoot! academy. https://kahoot.com/academy/

Kahoot! Help Centre. (n.d.-a.). How to use workspaces. Kahoot! https://support.kahoot.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053998413-How-to-use-workspaces

Kahoot! Help Centre. (n.d.-b.). Does Kahoot! meet accessibility standards?. Kahoot!. https://support.kahoot.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004537447-Does-Kahoot-meet-accessibility-standards

Nearpod. (n.d.). Formative assessment teaching tools. https://nearpod.com/formative-assessment

Nearpod Help Centre. (n.d.). Accessibility with Nearpod: How-to. Nearpod. https://nearpod.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360061945231-Accessibility-with-Nearpod-How-To

Nearpod Team (2023, February 7). 3 ways text-to-speech transform your classroom through Immersive Reader. Nearpod. https://nearpod.com/blog/text-to-speech-immersive-reader/

Nearpod Team. (2024, April 4). 3 tips for using Nearpod’s lesson library. Nearpod. https://nearpod.com/blog/3-tips-for-using-nearpods-lesson-library/

Next Generation Teacher. (2021, July 5). Pear Deck VS Nearpod: Which one’s better?.
[Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9EUKvvsNW8&ab_channel=NextGenerationTeacher

Stephens, D. (2024, January 11). How to monitor student progress with real-time formative assessment data. Nearpod. https://nearpod.com/blog/monitoring-student-progress-formative-assessment/

Woods, P. (2021, September 22). Foster and strengthen students’ collaboration skills with Kahoot!’s new team mode option. Kahoot!. https://kahoot.com/blog/2021/09/22/kahoots-new-team-mode/