Students retain more through discussion than by simply listening to a lecture. Incorporating active learning moments is one way to increase discussion among students. However, if students have not read assignments they can't interact with the material. Students often delay reading until the instructor highlights the important points. Effectively adding active learning techniques required me to find a way to move the students' initial contact with the material from the lecture to prior to the lecture. Pre-class on-line quizzes using the ‘Blackboard' course management system were utilized to approach this goal. Students accessed the quiz through ‘Blackboard' and were provided five random questions from a quiz pool. Quizzes were untimed and closed 30 minutes prior to class. Students were encouraged to take quizzes together. Twenty quizzes worth 5 points each were graded during the semester. Quiz effectiveness was evaluated based on exam grades and student responses to specific questions during the course evaluation. 70% of the students responded that 'the quizzes were valuable in forcing me to prepare for class', and 90% indicated that 'the quizzes contributed positively to my understanding in the subsequent class period'. Exams scores increased 2.75 percentage points and 6.5 percentage points in two sections when quizzes were given compared to similar sections the previous semester when on-line quizzes were not utilized. Exam scores were significantly related to the number of quizzes attempted but not to the mean quiz score on attempted quizzes. Negatively, students reported that by the end of the semester they tended to look for the answers in the book without reading the material first. Quizzes positively affected student preparation. Future changes will include placing a 10 minute time limit on the quiz so that students will need to read the assignment prior to attempting the quiz.