The pretest feature changes the course structure by adding 10 questions to the beginning of each lesson. This pretest measures the student's knowledge of the content and allows the lesson to be skipped if mastery has been demonstrated. If the student passes the pretest at the predetermined threshold, then the system will automatically advance the student to the next pretest. If the student fails, each activity within the lesson must be completed in order and then a quiz must be taken before moving forward with the course.
Unlike prescriptive testing, pretesting can be turned on or off at any point, regardless of whether or not the student has started the course.
A pretest uses one of the student’s assessment attempts, so educators may wish to compensate by adding an additional retake attempt in the Fail Attempts Allowed section of the Assessment Options page.
Review the following sections of this article:
- Frequently asked questions
- How the pretest grade is counted
- Courses for which pretesting is not available or does not work
- Enabling and disabling pretesting
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Taking the pretest does count as one of the fail attempts, so if a student fails the pretest, they will be required to complete all activities within the lesson before the quiz can be launched again.
For example, if the fail attempts are set to one and the student fails the pretest, an alert will appear in the Dashboard because the student has exhausted all fail attempts. An instructor will need to provide an optional retake to allow this student to take the end-of-lesson quiz.
Yes. The lesson’s content will be assessed on tests and exams regardless of whether the student passes or fails the pretest.
The system will automatically send the student back to the lesson’s activities, which must be completed in order.
Caution
We do not recommend enabling the Free Movement feature and pretesting together. Free movement does not work well with pretesting because it sets the course to a nonsequential learning mode, allowing students to jump to different lessons without structure.
With no structure to follow, if a student fails the pretest and clicks the Next Activity button, the system will send the student to the next lesson’s quiz rather than the lesson’s activities.
Without the Free Movement feature enabled, the student will be moved to the activities in the lesson that was failed during the pretest. However, with free movement enabled, students need to take the effort to go back to the course map and proactively select each activity. Once the students click into the first activity, they can continue to use the Next Activity button at the bottom.
Language Arts courses require students to engage in reading and writing and are not just about mastering skills. With pretesting turned on, students might no longer be required to write essays. Additionally, they could pretest out of lessons that required them to read chapters 1, 3, and 4 or an extended text and only be assigned to read chapters 2 and 5, which would result in a disjointed learning experience.
If students pretest out of a lesson, all activities in the lesson are removed. However, if a lesson has no quiz, it will also have no pretest. Lab lessons generally do not have quizzes, so students would not be able to pretest out of lab lessons.
How it works
In general, the pretest only counts towards a student's grade if the student passes the pretests. Below are some scenarios to consider:
| If... | Then... | How the pretest counts towards the grade |
|---|---|---|
| Student passes pretest on first attempt | All activities are bypassed. |
The pretest score counts as a quiz score and is calculated into the grade. Students can go back at any time and review the skipped content from sections they tested out of. Scores earned on skipped content do not count toward the student's overall grade. These activities display as bypassed and are in grey text. |
| Student fails pretest on first attempt | Student must complete all activities and take a quiz at the end of the lesson. |
The pretest score does not count toward the overall grade. The quiz score at the end of the lesson counts toward the student's grade. |
| Pretest is bypassed | Student must complete all activities. |
The quiz at the end of the lesson remains bypassed unless the teacher removes the bypass. The quiz shows as bypassed in the Gradebook and does not count toward the student's grade. If the teacher removes the bypass, the student will take the quiz and it will count as the quiz grade. |
| Pretest is reset | Student is allowed to retake the pretest. |
If the student passes the reset pretest, the pretest counts towards the student's grade. Pretests can only be reset once. If the student fails the reset pretest, they must complete all activities and take the quiz at the end of the lesson, which will count towards the student's quiz grade. |
Caution
When students pass a pretest, those questions will be included in the test and exam bank for later in the course. Also, keep in mind that some lessons do not contain quizzes (such as project lessons). The activities in these lessons will automatically be assigned to the student to complete and pretesting will not allow them to skip these lessons.
Courses for which pretesting is not available or does not work
Pretesting is not available or does not work on the following courses:
- AP courses
-
CTE project-based career courses
- eDynamic Learning courses
- NCAA
- World Language LMS
Enabling and disabling pretesting
To find out how to enable or disable pretesting, use one of the following links:
| Edit the Course Options for a Student | Edit the Course Options for a Single Course | Edit the Course Options for Multiple Courses |