With Piqosity's content creation features educators can build their own tests from Piqosity's bank of over 20,000 unique questions. In this article we'll take a look at the core functions of Piqosity's test builder. 


Finding the Test Builder 

1. From any page on your Piqosity account click "Content" in the Banner at the top of the screen.

2. Click on "New Test" within the dropdown window.

Creating a Test 


Step 1 - Filling in the Basics


  1. Title corresponds to what your test will be called.
  2. Course is the course from which questions will be pulled. Note: a test can only be made from one course's material (i.e. you can't combine Algebra 2 and ACT questions to make your course). 
  3. Select the private, public, or premium designation for your test to indicate which Piqosity users can view your test.
    • Private tests can only be seen by you and your students.
    • Public tests can be seen and used by any Piqosity user.
    • Premium tests can be seen and used by any user who pays for a Piqosity account.  
  4. Locked and unlocked tests refer to personalized practice. 
    • A locked tests' questions will not show up in your students' Personalized Practice, but an unlocked tests' questions will.
  5. Click the "+" button when you're done filling in the above information and ready to create your first section. 

Step 2 - Create a test section 


  1. Clicking the "+" tab creates a section. Upon clicking it for the first time you'll see a tab labelled "1". Click on this tab to be taken to the first section. 
  2. Click in this field to give your test section a name.
  3. Select the Topic for the first section. (Note: ELA courses will not have associated topics - skip to #4). 
    • The topics are fixed based on the overarching topics for each of Piqosity's courses. 
    • In the case of test-based courses (ISEE, ACT, SAT) the topics correspond to the test's sections.
  4. Enter directions for the section. 
    • Some courses will automatically populate the directions field, but you can edit these entries.
  5. This container holds the questions available for you to build your test. The question bank pulls all of the questions on Piqosity that are related to the topic you chose in #3.
    1. Author filters questions based on who wrote them on Piqosity. 
    2. Difficulty filters questions based on how difficult they are, with 1 being the easiest and 9 being the hardest.
    3. Subtopic filters questions based on their associated subtopic. 
    4. This field allows you to determine whether you'd like to view independent questions or questions related to passages. Note: passage based questions (PBQs) are only relevant for reading topic (i.e. ISEE Reading Comprehension or ACT Science).
    5. The search bar allows you to search the question bank in case you have a specific question you'd like to include. 
  6. You can click on the green question text to view the full version of a question. When you would like to include a particular question on your test, drag and drop it to the container on the left. 
  7. Once you start adding questions you'll see a few statistics that can help you understand the section you're building:
    • Question count indicates the number of questions in the section
    • Difficulty indicates the average difficulty of questions in the section
    • EVAD (Expected Versus Actual Difficulty) shows the question author's perceived difficulty versus the question's actual difficulty on Piqosity. 
  8. Once you're done creating sections, click back to the "All Sections" tab and click save.
    • If you'd like to change the order of sections, you can do so from the "All Sections" tab by dragging and dropping the sections.


Using Your Created Tests


Now that you've created a test you can have your students work through it. The two options for having students use your tests are:

  • Integrating your test into an assignment
  • Having your students access your test from the Full-Length Tests Page.


To use your test in an assignment, carry out the following steps:

  1. Open the assignment builder.
  2. Enter the basic information for the assignment, and select the students whom you would like to receive the assignment.
  3. Click the "+" button and add a question-based section to the assignment. 
  4. Select the "My Tests and Units" button, and choose your created test.
  5. Then, click "Submit".

For more information on assignments check out our article on Creating Assignments for Students.


To have your students access your test from the Full-Length Tests Page, carry out the following steps:

  1. From the Student Dashboard, click on the "Tests" button in the Quick Access Bar.
  2. Click on the "Organization" tab to view tests that were created by educators within the student's organization. 
  3. Click the "Start" button next to the test that you'd like to take.