Decide when to use exam marking
There are two modes of marking in MiniTest.
- Standard marking – categorise each response as Red or Green, without assigning marks.
- Exam marking – grade each response with a specific number of marks.
Use standard marking for formative assessment
MiniTest is most effective when used for short, frequent diagnostic tests. For example, many schools set fortnightly one-page topic tests which teachers use to identify which topics are secure and which ones need reteaching.
For these tests, we just need to know whether each student understands the topic (Green), or does not yet understand (Red). This means standard marking is best because it's extremely quick and a whole class set of assessments can be scanned and marked in around ten minutes.
Each question should assess a skill in isolation. For example, one question might test "Expand double brackets with negatives". It is not helpful to include questions which span multiple topics or involve complex problem solving, because if students get it Red then that doesn't tell us much about their gaps in understanding – perhaps they got confused by one of the topics, but we don't know which one, or perhaps they struggled with the overall reasoning. The whole point is to use questions which, when marked as Green or Red, uncover useful insights into students' understanding.
Use exam marking for summative assessment
Periodically, it is helpful to administer a summative test such as a mock exam. These assessments often include multi-mark problem solving and reasoning questions, making exam marking most appropriate. Although this method is slower and less diagnostic, it can be useful for determining predicted grades or evaluating overall student performance.
Comparison table
There are several differences between the two marking modes.
| Standard marking | Exam marking | |
|---|---|---|
| Recommended for most assessments. | Useful for end-of-term tests and exams. | |
| Formative assessment | check_circle Marking questions as Red/Green is ideal for assessing topic-level understanding. You can easily identify knowledge gaps and address them through responsive teaching. | remove_circle Questions which involve reasoning and/or span multiple topics don't have the same diagnostic value, because they are not designed to assess isolated skills. You can still view an automated question-level analysis (QLA) grid. |
| Summative assessment | remove_circle In the printouts and feedback emails, totals are not shown. This helps students focus on their strengths and development areas. | check_circle Marks are recorded for each question, and student totals are displayed on the summary screen, printouts, and feedback emails. |
| Rapid marking | check_circle Quickly click Red/Green or press R/G on the keyboard. | remove_circle Award marks by annotating ticks or using the number keys 0-9. This is more time-consuming, but still much faster than marking on paper. |
| Question Bank | check_circle Optionally, you can build tests from the built-in question bank or reuse your own pre-made questions. | cancel The question bank is not available. |
| Tracking over time | check_circle Set up trackers to monitor understanding across a range of tests, and view progress over time. Students can see which topics they've improved since previous tests. | cancel Results do not count towards topic trackers. |
| Anonymous marking | cancel You can see student names while marking. | check_circle Student names are hidden by default, to protect against unconscious bias. You can override this by adding ?showNames=true to the URL. |
| Moderation tools | cancel The Red/Green approach is low-stakes and does not require moderation. | check_circle Questions which are tricky to mark can be flagged for moderation, and later reviewed as a team. |