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short, online reading quizzes consisting of open-ended questions that are due several hours before class starts to do the job.  Most of the quiz questions are meant to help students focus on and make some sense of key concepts

Students submit answers to these questions online before class, and I grade their quizzes on effort.

pre-class reading quizzes allow me to practice what is often called “just-in-time teaching.”

pre-class reading quiz questions as a clicker question during class,

how do I implement these quizzes?

local course management system, but I found the system to cumbersome

I find it much easier to post course documents to a WordPress blog, and I like that it makes my course more open to those not enrolled in it. 

I create a Facebook fan page for each of my courses

that pulls in the course blog content via RSS

So I now post my pre-class reading quizzes on my course blogs, tagged with a “PCRQ” for easy locating

default comments feature on WordPress to have students reply to them.  This meant that students could read each other’s answers, which, for these questions, only enhanced the learning experience

So I looked around for a way to have students comment on posts semi-privately—where I could see their comments but they couldn’t see each other’s comments.  I found a WordPress plug-in called, appropriately, Semi-Private Comments!  (Plug-ins—yet another reason I prefer WordPress to a course management system.) 

he main limitation is that it doesn’t help me grade those quizzes