Why Aren't Mini Quizzes Graded?

At Banzai, we believe in developing engaging and interactive content that teaches life literacy in a fun and informative way. One of the features we offer within our school product is mini quizzes, which are short assessments designed to reinforce learning outcomes on specific topics within a course. You may have noticed, however, that mini quizzes are not always graded. So why is that?

Banzai's pre- and post-tests are both graded and designed to evaluate a student's overall understanding of an entire course. These assessments are longer and more comprehensive than mini quizzes, and are designed to measure your students' knowledge of the learning objectives for that course. By contrast, mini quizzes are designed to be a quick check-in on a specific topic or concept, and are not meant to be comprehensive assessments. 

Mini quizzes pop up randomly as students play through individual courses and are designed to keep the students engaged throughout the entire course. Often these quizzes go over material that the student has yet to learn in order to provide relevant context to scenarios in the game. In this way, mini quizzes are not testing a student’s knowledge but rather capitalizing on learning objectives and increasing knowledge retention.

Students' decisions (including answers to mini quizzes) are tracked throughout Banzai’s life-literacy courses—Internet Safety, Cyberbullying, Paying for College, and Scholarships—and are shown within the decision tree of each of these courses.

How to access the decision tree?

The decision tree is located within each individual student’s profile. To access it, select the classroom you want to review and the student profile you want to grade:

Make sure to navigate to the correct course and activity. Note that courses are represented by their names in the activity drop-down:

Once you've navigated to the correct course and activity, scroll until you find the "Comprehensive Quiz" node. There, you will see what the students scored and which questions they struggled answering:

Some of our simulations such as the Junior, Teen, and Plus courses involve money management scenarios. In these simulations, students have the opportunity to save money by making smart financial decisions. To encouraging a positive view of any perceived ability to save and manage money, we've refrained from grading mini quizzes within our financial literacy courses. Instead, we treat them as a measure of a student's financial management skills and their ability to make good financial decisions in real-life situations. So, though Junior, Teen, and Plus courses do have mini quizzes, they are not included in the decision tree in the same way they are for life-literacy courses.

Mini quizzes are a great tool for checking a student's understanding of specific life-literacy topics. While they may not always be graded, they can still help you and your students identify areas where more practice is needed.