Piqosity's Virtual Tutor 2 is a reliable and efficient way to work through a course on Piqosity. The tutor organizes subtopics into modules and then allows students to work through these modules one at a time. In this article, we cover the settings page for PVT 2 and what each of the settings mean. 


Finding the PVT 2 Settings Page


From the Student Dashboard, click on the "Virtual Tutor" button:


On the student dashboard, navigate to the "Settings" tab to view all of your PVT 2 settings: 

What PVT 2 Settings Mean


Below we'll explore into each category of settings and what they mean for your PVT 2 experience. To change any of these settings you'll need to:

  1. Toggle from "Standard" to "Custom" in the dropdown for the container that you want to edit.
  2. Click "Save as Custom" to make sure your selections were saved. 


Goal Settings

  1. Calculated Baseline Score: Tells you what PVT has calculated to be your overall baseline score based on your performance on the first 25 questions you answered in each topic.
  2. Override Baseline: 
    1. Toggling "On" allows you to input your own baseline score (i.e. you took a test off Piqosity and want to report your own score). This will override any baseline Piqosity calculates from your performance.
    2. Set each of your baseline scores for individual test sections with these dropdowns.
  3. Goal Score Measurement: Determines how Piqosity determines if you've met your goal score. "Norm" is for test prep courses and uses a data-normed curve. "Criterion" is for subject courses and uses your accuracy.
  4. Goal Score: The score (either a Norm (test prep) or Accuracy level (subject prep)) that you would like to hit in your course. Note: The goal score that you indicate affects which modules show up in the PVT outline. For example, a student who wants to hit "Top 1%" needs to know every subtopic that could show up on the test. A student who wants to hit "Top 50%" should spend less time on fringe subtopics and more time on high-impact subtopics. 

Remediation Settings

  1. Suggest Remediation: Determines whether Piqosity will provide the option for students to remediate a module immediately after falling below threshold (shown on the Progress Report with a button) and whether or not modules show up in the Personalized Outline. Toggled off results in remedial modules being shown only under the "Remedial" tab. 
  2. Remedial Accuracy Threshold: When you score below this accuracy on the "Lesson Practice" of a module, Piqosity will generate remedial modules. 
  3. Remediation Depth Max: This is the number of layers that you would like Piqosity to remediate for a student before stopping. For example, "2 layers" means we'll create remedial modules for the student if they fail a module in the main course outline (1 layer), and we'll also create remedial modules for the student if they fail one of the previously created remedial modules (layer 2). When the student hits their max number of layers Piqosity will not create remedial modules for any more failed modules in this remediation branch. Note: For technical reasons,"No Max" corresponds to 8 layers of remediation—Piqosity will not allow the student to go beyond this.

Question Settings

Question Settings are still in testing mode, so these settings cannot be adjusted just yet. Below we'll detail what these features will eventually allow users to do.

  1. Unaffiliated Contributors: Allow or disallow questions from educators who are neither official Piqosity educators nor your own educator(s). If you are an organization student, any educators within that organization are considered affiliated educators.
  2. Unverified Contributors: Allow or disallow questions from educators who are unverified. Verified educators are educators who are given the "Verified" designation by a Piqosity admin.
  3. High EVAD: Allow or disallow questions with a high "Expected Versus Actual Difficulty" (EVAD) score. A high EVAD means the educator who created the question initially marked it as far harder or easier than Piqosity's peer-normed data has found it to be. 

Practice Settings

  1. Lesson Practice Max Questions: Determine the maximum number of questions that are allowed to show up in Lesson Practice within a module. You may sometimes receive slightly fewer than the requested number of questions. This depends on how many tests you have unlocked, how many questions are available for the particular module's subtopic, and the practice mode you've selected.
  2. Lesson Practice Style: Chose the style you want for your lesson practice sets. Note: Practice for passage-based topics like "Main Idea" on the ISEE will come as whole passages—not individual questions—and the mode is always "Gamified Standard".
    • Adaptive (default): Piqosity dynamically selects questions with higher or lower accuracy based on how you answered the previous question. You will not see how you performed until the end of the quiz. You cannot move forwards and backwards to answer questions out of order.
    • Standard: Piqosity generates all the questions for the quiz at once, and you work through them one by one. You can move forwards and backwards in the quiz as needed. 
    • Gamified Standard: Identical to standard, however, Piqosity grades your answer to the question as soon as you hit the "Next" button and tells you if you got the question correct or not before you advance to the next question. You cannot move forwards or backwards to answer questions out of order. 
  3. Include General Practice: General Practice is Piqosity's way of making sure that you are reviewing previously completed content areas. Piqosity automatically selects subtopics for general practice based on the student's past performance. It shows low accuracy topics, topics with many unanswered questions, or topics the student has not seen in 30+ days.
  4. General Practice Style: Choose the style you want for your general practice sets. For options see "Lesson Practice Style" above. Note: Practice for passage-based topics like "Main Idea" on the ISEE will come as whole passages—not individual questions—and the mode is always "Gamified Standard".
  5. General Practice Max Questions: Determine the maximum number of questions that are allowed to show up in Lesson Practice within a module. You may sometimes receive slightly fewer than the requested number of questions. This depends on how many tests you have unlocked, how many questions are available for the particular module's subtopic, and the practice mode you've selected. Note: You will not receive any general practice until you've completed enough subtopics for Piqosity to show you relevant content. 

Lesson Settings

Lesson Settings are still in testing mode, so these settings cannot be adjusted just yet. Below we'll detail what these features will eventually allow users to do.


Lesson settings determine which lessons to show a student. They are drag-and-drop and ordered based on importance from top (most important) to bottom. For example: if seeing video lessons is the most important factor for you, then drag "Media" to the top of the list and select "Videos".

  1. Contributor: Select the contributors who you want to see lessons uploaded by. 
  2. Publisher: Select the publisher who you want to see lessons sponsored by—usually Piqosity or your school.
  3. Media:  Select the type of lessons that you primarily want to see—text or videos.

Calendar Settings

  1. Enable Calendar: Decide whether or not the calendar shows up in your tabs or not. 
  2. Start of First Day of School: This date selection tells Piqosity when you're ready to start working modules. 
  3. Test or End Date: This date selection tells Piqosity when you need to be done with the course by. It also informs Piqosity's calculations on if you will finish on time given your study schedule.
  4. Officially Registered: Toggle "Yes" if you are registered and/or don't want to receive sign-up reminders from Piqosity. If you toggle "No" we may send you reminders to sign up for a test when the testing season gets closer.
  5. Study Days: Select the days of each week that you plan to study. This helps Piqosity populate the calendar. 
  6. Hours per Day: Select the "hours per day" that you plan to study on your study days. We use this to give a rough calculation of how many modules you'll complete each day (with a ball-park time of 30 minutes per module). 

Restoring Settings to Default Values

If you've tampered with your settings and you'd like to restore them to their default values, you can click "Restore All Settings" to do so. This will not eliminate any of your progress and saved work in the course. However, it will erase all of your custom settings and restore them to what they looked like when you first logged in.