EdgeEX course options — Pretesting

The Pretesting settings can be changed at any time, but changes are not retroactive.

If a student has already pretested out of a lesson, turning pretesting off will not force the student to complete that lesson. A teacher would have to reset the lesson for that to occur.

With pretesting off, if a student completes all activities in a lesson except the quiz, turning pretesting on will not insert a pretest in that lesson. In the case where a student has Free Movement on and Pretesting off, but they had completed and not yet passed a quiz, a pretest would be inserted.

If the threshold is raised so that a previous pass would have been a fail, the previously passed pretest is still considered a pass, and the student does not have to go back and redo the lesson.

When pretesting is enabled, teachers will see the following in the student’s Gradebook only (the following will not appear in the course structure tab of the Course Hub, Section Hub, or Enrollment Hub, and no additional time will be added to the estimated completion time for the course):

• A pretest will display in the course structure.
• The status of all other activities in the course will display as Pretesting to indicate that students may or may not be assigned this activity. 
• If a student fails a pretest, the activities in that lesson will change to Not Started status. Students will need to complete these activities.
• If a student passes a pretest, the activities in that lesson will change to Pretested Out status. Students will not need to complete these activities. The Pretested Out status behaves the same way as the Complete status when it comes to advancing Actual Progress. However, if they choose to, students can launch these activities and review the content or even complete them. If a student completes an activity they pretested out of, it will count toward their course grade (assuming it is an activity type that is counted). If students launch an activity they have pretested out of, they will be able to navigate freely within it, that is, they will not need to complete each page to view the next page. This allows them to review content more easily when they are studying for a test or exam. 

When a student pretests out of a lesson, their Pretest score is counted toward their course grade in the Quiz grade weight category. If a student wants to try to raise their score, they can use their available Quiz attempts.

If a student passes the Pretest, but gets a higher score on a subsequent Quiz attempt, the higher score will be counted instead of the Pretest score. Note that when a student exhausts their available “initial allowed attempts” (as configured in the course options), the student will not appear on the Launchpad as needing more attempts, because they already have a passing, counted attempt. However, a teacher can manually add more attempts from the Gradebook, up to the “max allowed attempts,” (as configured in the course options), if they choose.

In some cases, a failing Pretest score can be counted toward a student’s course grade.

This will happen if a student exhausts their maximum allowed attempts for the Quiz but has not achieved a passing score and the highest attempt score is the Pretest score. For example, consider a student with a pretest score of 50 and a maximum allowed attempts value of 3. If the student’s Quiz attempt scores are 20, 30, and 40, the student will receive a Quiz score of 50, reflecting the fact that their highest attempt score was the Pretest attempt.

It can also happen when the student’s Pretest score is lower than the Pretest passing threshold but meets the Quiz passing threshold. Consider a student with a Pretest score of 70, when the Pretest passing threshold is 80 and the Quiz passing threshold is 70. This student completes the lesson and takes the Quiz once, with a score of 60. This student’s pretest will be counted as a passing Quiz score, and the student will be able to move on to the next activity. (If they want to try to raise their score, they can continue taking any available attempts.)

When a student’s due dates and target progress are computed, the system assumes students will fail all Pretests and have to complete all activities in each lesson. When a student passes a given Pretest, they will see their actual progress increase the same amount they would if they had completed the lesson.

Turning pretesting on or off has no impact on the Actual Grade or Relative Grade.

• Any activities past due will be counted as zeroes in a student’s Actual Grade, regardless of whether a student might eventually pretest out of them. In other words, an activity that appears as Pretesting in the gradebook is still counted as a zero in the Actual Grade if it is past due.
• All activities that are not yet completed will be counted as zeroes in a student’s Relative Grade, regardless of whether a student might eventually pretest out of them.

If a lesson does not have an item bank associated with it, no pretest will be generated for that lesson, and the student will need to complete the lesson in its entirety. Note that turning off the Quiz during course customization does not impact whether a pretest can be generated. However, if the quiz is customized out of the lesson, a passed pretest will not be counted toward the student’s course grade.

The teacher has 2 options. Both will remove the passed pretest as the counted Quiz attempt, but one will let the student try the pretest again (reset the pretest) and the other will not (override the pretest score).

1. Reset the pretest. If the student fails the reset pretest, they will need to complete all the lesson activities If the student passes the reset pretest, the lesson activities will revert to Pretested Out status.
2. Change the passing score to a zero (or other failing score). This will reassign all the activities the student pretested out of, and the student will not get another chance to take the pretest.

When a Pretest is reset, the following happens:

• If a student previously passed a Pretest, all the activities they placed out of will change back to the Pretesting status and will be assigned if the student does not pass the new Pretest attempt.
• If a student previously failed a Pretest, all the activities they started or completed will be left intact. If they fail the new Pretest attempt, they will retain their work in any activities they had started and can pick up where they left off. If they pass the new Pretest attempt, any activities that were not completed will change to the Pretested Out status (students will not lose their work in any in-progress activities, should they choose to complete them anyway).
• Previous Pretest attempts are maintained for reference and visible in the Gradebook with an Attempt status of Reset. Reset attempt scores are not eligible to be counted as the Quiz score, even if they are the highest-scoring attempt.

The following table outlines the impact of resetting a Pretest on all the activities in that lesson:

Activity	Status before Pretest is reset	Status after Pretest is reset
Pretest	Complete	Not Started (with reset icon)
Activities student pretested out of	Permanently Bypassed - Pretested Out	Temporarily Bypassed - Awaiting Pretest (with lock icon and no reset icon)
Activities student didn’t pretest out of and didn’t start	Not Started	Temporarily Bypassed - Awaiting Pretest (with lock icon and no reset icon)
Activities student didn’t pretest out of and completed	Complete	Complete
Activities student didn’t pretest out of and started but didn’t complete	In Progress	Temporarily Bypassed - Awaiting Pretest (with lock icon, no reset icon) If the student fails the new pretest attempt, these activities revert to In Progress status. If the student passes the new pretest attempt, these activities change to Permanently Bypassed -  Pretested Out status; however, if the student launches one of these activities, they launch the in-progress attempt, not a new attempt. The activity status stays as Permanently Bypassed - Pretested Out until the student completes the activity, though; the activity status never changes back to In Progress status.

This table outlines the impact of overriding a completed pretest score on all the activities in that lesson (note that if the score is changed from one passing score to another passing score or from one failing score to another failing score, no activities change status.):

Action	Activity	Status before Pretest score is overridden	Status after Pretest score is overridden
Teacher overrides a completed Pretest	Pretest	Complete	Complete
Teacher changes a Pretest score from passing to failing	Activities student pretested out of but hasn't started	Permanently Bypassed - Pretested Out	Not Started
	Activities student pretested out of, started anyway, and didn't complete	Permanently Bypassed - Pretested Out	In Progress
	Activities student pretested out of and completed	Complete	Complete
Teacher changes a Pretest score from failing to passing	Activities student didn't pretest out of and hasn't started	Not Started	Permanently Bypassed - Pretested Out
	Activities student didn't pretest out of and has started but not completed	In Progress	Permanently Bypassed - Pretested Out
	Activities student didn't  pretest out of and completed	Complete	Complete

Yes. You can set the pretesting passing threshold to 101, and the system will give students pretests but not let students place out of the lessons. This is a great way to measure growth while still requiring students to complete every lesson.