The Question is a Node: Online Quizzes as Interactive Non-Fiction
Proposal Type
Individual Talk
Location
Hypertexts & Fictions
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
The quiz is the most widely deployed form of interactive text in education. Even when it is not digitally administered, it presents a prompt, receives a response, and contains within it a formula determining the consequences of that response. A wrong answer is taken as a failure of learning (not mere recall) and, by virtue of their quasi-digital objectivity, a batch of low quiz scores might warn of difficulty in reaching benchmarks. Ergo, quizzes embody the automation of the supervisory function of the instructor, and the supervision of curricula.
Quiz questions have something in common with nodes in digital interactive fiction, like Twine narratives, but the possibilities in that common ground remain under-explored. This common ground is visible through what I call ludoception: a perceptual faculty for detecting game-like structures in non-game systems, and for seeing how that latent structure suggests ways to navigate (or redesign) such systems. Read ludoceptively, quiz questions are nodes, and the quiz itself is functionally a playable text.
Quizzes are not considered games, or really "literature", let alone a form of interactive non-fiction, but their composition involves aesthetic and game-adjacent considerations (like whether to penalize guessing more than skipping a question).
As education moves online, gamification follows, and not for engagement's sake. Support for gamification will increase as supervision becomes more cost prohibitive, because games can handle complex, internal, self-sustaining scoring systems (“unsupervised assessments”). A historicization of questions-as-mechanics in literature could start at the Sphinx, but my talk focuses on Interactive Fiction (IF), and the possibilities for quizzes found by looking at question-functions as nodes in playable texts (branching at error points, retroactive score adjustment based on later clarifications, et al.)
The talk situates interactive fiction's overlooked relevance to quiz design within this ludoceptive frame. I will demonstrate my point using a Learning Management System of my own design (Cartouche LMS, created using partly AI-generated code and materials from my decade of teaching writing and game design). Cartouche is specifically designed for gamified online classes, and it re-imagines the traditional elements of an LMS (including quizzes) to better resemble their game-counterparts. A sample course on Game Writing, using this LMS, will be made available to attendees to engage with online. (It includes procedurally generated students, complete with grievances.)
In this LMS, a quiz is a directed graph and can return a grade, but also returns a diagram of the student's traversal of the quiz. Through a bespoke quiz-editor, I demonstrate the possibilities for unsupervised assessments that can track, not only errors, but which misconceptions lead to those errors, among other things that normally require more supervision. The trade-off is that the quiz becomes a sophisticated form of writing that involves the instructor more deeply during its creation. As a matter of course, quizzes begin to resemble Interactive Fiction (IF), and this can be gamified to taste.
The full design space of playable texts includes branching, gating, state-tracking, and retroactive consequence. I show how these features help educators capitalize upon (not sacrifice) the main virtue of computerized quizzes: immediate and objective assessment. Alongside an examination of questions in digital IF, I explain why quizzes should incorporate those features in their design.
The Question is a Node: Online Quizzes as Interactive Non-Fiction
Hypertexts & Fictions
The quiz is the most widely deployed form of interactive text in education. Even when it is not digitally administered, it presents a prompt, receives a response, and contains within it a formula determining the consequences of that response. A wrong answer is taken as a failure of learning (not mere recall) and, by virtue of their quasi-digital objectivity, a batch of low quiz scores might warn of difficulty in reaching benchmarks. Ergo, quizzes embody the automation of the supervisory function of the instructor, and the supervision of curricula.
Quiz questions have something in common with nodes in digital interactive fiction, like Twine narratives, but the possibilities in that common ground remain under-explored. This common ground is visible through what I call ludoception: a perceptual faculty for detecting game-like structures in non-game systems, and for seeing how that latent structure suggests ways to navigate (or redesign) such systems. Read ludoceptively, quiz questions are nodes, and the quiz itself is functionally a playable text.
Quizzes are not considered games, or really "literature", let alone a form of interactive non-fiction, but their composition involves aesthetic and game-adjacent considerations (like whether to penalize guessing more than skipping a question).
As education moves online, gamification follows, and not for engagement's sake. Support for gamification will increase as supervision becomes more cost prohibitive, because games can handle complex, internal, self-sustaining scoring systems (“unsupervised assessments”). A historicization of questions-as-mechanics in literature could start at the Sphinx, but my talk focuses on Interactive Fiction (IF), and the possibilities for quizzes found by looking at question-functions as nodes in playable texts (branching at error points, retroactive score adjustment based on later clarifications, et al.)
The talk situates interactive fiction's overlooked relevance to quiz design within this ludoceptive frame. I will demonstrate my point using a Learning Management System of my own design (Cartouche LMS, created using partly AI-generated code and materials from my decade of teaching writing and game design). Cartouche is specifically designed for gamified online classes, and it re-imagines the traditional elements of an LMS (including quizzes) to better resemble their game-counterparts. A sample course on Game Writing, using this LMS, will be made available to attendees to engage with online. (It includes procedurally generated students, complete with grievances.)
In this LMS, a quiz is a directed graph and can return a grade, but also returns a diagram of the student's traversal of the quiz. Through a bespoke quiz-editor, I demonstrate the possibilities for unsupervised assessments that can track, not only errors, but which misconceptions lead to those errors, among other things that normally require more supervision. The trade-off is that the quiz becomes a sophisticated form of writing that involves the instructor more deeply during its creation. As a matter of course, quizzes begin to resemble Interactive Fiction (IF), and this can be gamified to taste.
The full design space of playable texts includes branching, gating, state-tracking, and retroactive consequence. I show how these features help educators capitalize upon (not sacrifice) the main virtue of computerized quizzes: immediate and objective assessment. Alongside an examination of questions in digital IF, I explain why quizzes should incorporate those features in their design.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2026/hypertextsandfictions/schedule/29
Bio
https://www.ludoception.com/lms