A course's home page features several displays that indicate course progress and success. In this article, we'll examine all of them and show how your displays are determined.

The Progress Bars

The Progress Bars show the learner how much of the course they have accomplished, and how much of Today's Knowledge Goal has been accomplished.

 

 

Today's Knowledge Goals are determined by dividing the amount of work left in a course by the Learner's self-defined deadline (using the Study Plan calendar)  If, for example, a course has 100 knowledge points left and the learner enters a 10-day deadline, each Daily Knowledge Goal will work out to 10 knowledge points. Each day it will reset to empty and fill as your learner reaches the Daily Goal. 

 

The Study Plan Progress bar is more straightforward; it displays the learner's progress through the entire course.

Percentile Rank

The Percentile Rank shows the learner’s performance on practice questions and quizzes, relative to all other learners who have completed the content.

 

To determine a rank, the course calculates the learner’s overall success in the course and compares that rank to all other users' success. Many factors are included in the calculation of this rank:

• number of learners in the course
• difficulty level of the questions the user has answered
• number of questions the user has answered
• how other learners answered the questions
• amount of content the user has not completed

Average Scores

The Average Score circle displays indicate a learner's average scores across practice questions, tests, and interactions in a course. Averages are determined by their most recent scores and do not include previous scores. So if, for example, a learner resets a test and takes it again, their new score will be used to calculate their average test score.

Average Score on Interactions includes completed scored interactions only - unscored interactions are not factored into the average. If there are no interactions in a course, the "Avg. Score on Interactions" will not appear on the home page.

 

 

If there are no interactions in a course, the "Avg. Score on Interactions" will not appear on the home page.

Strengths & Weaknesses

A user’s strengths and weaknesses are determined by our adaptive engine. Strengths and weaknesses are not fixed, and they constantly update based on our measurements of the skill of the user, proficiency in the specific category as well as the difficulty of the items they are answering. We are running normalized values and placing them in buckets (Beginner, Basic, Intermediate, Proficient, Advanced, Expert) based on averages and standard deviation.

 

Primarily, a user's performance in a particular category will inform their strength in that category. But the questions in a category have varying levels of difficulty determined by total user performance. Using standard deviation and Elo (a self-correcting formula for comparison), we can calculate a 'score' that we demonstrate as Strengths and Weaknesses.

 

Because of this, if all users in a particular course are struggling with Category X, a user who does marginally well in that category will demonstrate strength in that category, because they're relatively better. But if most people in the course are excelling in Category X, it will be more difficult to get an expert rating.

 

To calculate Strength and Weaknesses the category must contain the minimum requirement of 5 questions per category.  Free Response question type is not factored into Strength and Weaknesses calculation.  If the category does not meet the minimum criteria or only has Free Response questions the Strength and Weaknesses will not be calculated for the learner in that category and the category will display N/A.

 

NOTE: Resetting a specific practice question category, all question categories, or resetting a course will not reset a learner's Strengths & Weaknesses. This is because they've already gained knowledge in the subject, as learners will have a different experience answering questions they've already taken versus ones they're seeing for the first time.