Kahoot! is a Norwegian online

game-based learning Educational games are games explicitly designed with educational purposes, or which have incidental or secondary educational value. All types of games may be used in an educational environment, however educational games are games that are design ...

platform. It has learning games, also known as "kahoots", which are

user-generated User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), emerged from the rise of web services which allow a system's users to create content, such as images, videos, audio, text, testimonials, and software (e.g. video ...

multiple-choice Multiple choice (MC), objective response or MCQ (for multiple choice question) is a form of an objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select only the correct answer from the choices offered as a list. The multiple choice format i ...

quizzes that can be accessed via a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

or the Kahoot! app.

History

Prototypes and development

The game concept used in Kahoot! originated in a series of prototypes called "Lecture Quiz" that were developed by Alf Inge Wang at

Norwegian University of Science and Technology The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU; ) is a public university, public research university in Norway and the largest in terms of enrollment. The university's headquarters is located in Trondheim (city), Trondheim, with region ...

(NTNU) in 2006. Lecture Quiz 1.0 was developed in 2006. The server was implemented in

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

and

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

, integrated with an

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

Web server. The teacher client was implemented as a

application, in combination with

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

for graphics, while the student clients were implemented on Java 2 Micro Edition. This made it possible to run the client on both mobile phones and laptops. Lecture Quiz 2.0, developed in 2011, was the first prototype where both teacher and student clients had web-interfaces. The last version of Lecture Quiz was version 3.0 in 2012, with improved user-interface implemented using

HTML 5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

and CSS3, avatars, and multiple game/team modes.

Company history

Kahoot! was founded as a company in 2012 by Morten Versvik, one of Wang's students. Johan Brand, Jamie Brooker and Asmund Furuseth later joined the company as cofounders to develop its user interface and design. A

beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

of the platform was launched in September 2013. In March 2017, Kahoot! reached one billion cumulative participating players. In September 2017, Kahoot! launched a mobile application for homework. In 2019, Kahoot! acquired the Scandinavian education company Poio. It also acquired DragonBox, an educational games developer, for $18 million. In 2020, Kahoot! was valued at $1.5 billion and achieved

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

status. As of 2021, the company was valued at USD$7 billion. In 2020 they acquired Drops, which was focused on teaching languages, for $50 million. This was followed by Whiteboard.fi, which develops software for digital, online whiteboards. Kahoot! also acquired the Danish startup Actimo, which developed employee training software, for $33 million. It was acquired to expand Kahoot's features for business users. In March 2021, the company went public on the Oslo stock exchange. In April 2021, Kahoot! acquired Motimate, a corporate learning company based in Norway, for $25 million. In 2021, Kahoot! announced that it would acquire SSO digital learning platform Clever, Inc. for $500 million. In 2023, Kahoot was acquired by a group of investors included

Goldman Sachs Asset Management The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many international ...

for $1.72 billion in cash.

Research

In 2016, an evaluation of Kahoot!'s

pedagogical Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...

quality by Education Alliance Finland (formerly Kokoa Standard) suggested that Kahoot!'s educational value was highest when students are creating quizzes of relevant topics themselves, because it uses

creativity Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable Idea, ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, Literature, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physica ...

and practices 21st-century skills. A literature review containing 93 studies on the effect of using Kahoot! for learning was published in the journal ''Computers & Education'' in 2020, it found that using the platform had an overall positive effect on classroom dynamics, learning and anxiety.

References

{{Commons Educational technology companies of Norway Educational technology Internet properties established in 2013 Norwegian educational websites Educational apps

History

Prototypes and development

Company history

Research

See also

References