How Teachers Can Use Test Analytics to Teach Better

A test gives you a score for each student. Analytics gives you something more useful: where the class as a whole is struggling.

Start with the hardest questions

List the questions that most students got wrong. For each, decide whether the cause was the teaching, the question wording or genuine difficulty. A badly worded question needs fixing; a topic most missed needs reteaching.

Group errors by topic

Add up wrong answers by topic. A topic with many errors across many students is a candidate for a revision class.

Look at the distractors

If many students choose the same wrong option, they share a misconception. Address it directly in class, by naming the mistake and showing why it fails.

Differentiate follow-up

Students who made different errors need different follow-ups. Give a short topic test on the shared weak area, and individual suggestions for the rest.

Close the loop

A week after reteaching, give a short test on the same topic to check the improvement. For setting up online assessments, see how teachers can conduct online assessments, and learn about the platform on the online testing for teachers page. Students can learn to read their own results with this guide.