Students can take both full-length practice tests and adaptive/ individualized quizzes on Piqosity:
- Full-length tests are created by editors to mimic an actual exam and as such the questions and order never change for any student.
- Personalized Practice is created algorithmically and on-demand according to the student's demonstrated weaknesses or specifications.
Below we describe how to get started with Personalized Practice.
Step 1 - From the Student Dashboard click on the "Practice" button in the Quick Access Bar.
Step 2 - Customize your settings from the Personalized Practice screen.
- The Topic field determines the specific topic that you would like to practice in. Topics are analogous to test sections. For example, on the Upper Level ISEE the topics are Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, Math Achievement, and the Essay.
- Subtopics allows you to select the Subtopics that you would like to work on within the overarching topic that you've selected (i.e. "Determining Slope" is a subtopic of Unit 2 in Algebra 2).
- Style refers to the type of Personalized Practice that you would like to do.
- Adaptive means that the questions become progressively more difficult as a student answers them correctly. Questions are timed, and the assignment is graded at the end of the assignment.
- Standard means that all of the questions are generated at once. The entire question set is timed, and the assignment is graded at the end.
- Gamified Standard means that questions are graded after each answer. Students earn points for answering questions.
- # of Questions is the number of questions that you want to include in the practice set.
- Educator-Led Practice means that you will complete the practice set with an instructor and your performance will not count towards your statistics. Turning on Allow Overtime tells Piqosity not to end the practice set when you run out of time.
- Advanced Options are practice options for advanced users that allow for further customizability (covered below).
As you make selections Piqosity will grey out or autofill certain fields. This means that the option you selected automatically governs other fields.
After you enter a topic and (optional) subtopic, Piqosity will calculate how many questions are available based on your selections. Note: this number is the maximum number of questions available, but you may have access to fewer questions depending on your plan:
Step 3 - Click the "Start Exam" Button After Entering Your Settings
Understanding Advanced Options
Advanced options are not necessary for using Personalized Practice, but they are available for users who want to customize their Personalized Practice experience further.
- Difficulty refers to the difficulty of the questions that you would like to work. Questions on Piqosity are scored from difficulty level 1 (easiest) to 9 (hardest). The difficulty levels correspond to these ranges:
- Easy: Difficulty Levels 1 - 3
- Medium: Difficulty Levels 4 - 6
- Hard: Difficulty Levels 7 - 9
- Recycle Content tells Piqosity whether or not you are willing to work questions you have already seen before. Your selections here mean the following:
- Yes - Piqosity will show you questions you have seen before when it runs out of questions that you have not seen.
- No - Piqosity will not show you questions you have seen before, and will cut down question counts or warn "No Content to Display" when you are runing out of questions to work.
- Only Missed - Piqosity will show you questions you have seen before when it runs out of questions that you have not seen, but it will only use questions that you previously answered incorrectly.
- Game Style is for Gamified Mode only.
- Gamified Standard shows you all the questions you've requested at once and grades each question after you answer it.
- Gamified Streak starts with 1 question and provides 1 additional question every time you answer correctly to see how long you can make your streak.
- Game Sound can be set to "On" or "Off", and it indicates whether you would like noises to be included in your Gamified Practice.
- Educators corresponds to which educators' content you would like to see. Leave this setting on "All" unless otherwise instructed by your teacher.
- PBQs are passage-based questions. Piqosity will automatically toggle this setting to create the smoothest practice experience based on your selections.
- Passage Type refers to the style of passage that you would like to work. For example, passage types can include fiction, nonfiction, and narrative nonfiction.
- Content Tags allow you to select specifically tagged questions.
Additional Features in Personalized Practice
1. You can see what content is available for you to work by checking out the Available Content tab.
2. To gain additional access to content for Personalized Practice you can use the Test Unlocking tab.