Why do some students receive a higher Student Score than their peers, when they answered fewer questions correctly?

The Student Score is related to the difficulty level of the questions answered. Therefore, a student can answer fewer questions correctly than their classmate, yet receive a higher Student Score because they answered questions of a higher difficulty.

Atom uses an adaptive platform, which means the question difficulty adapts based on the student’s previous answer.

Because of this, two pupils could both answer 70% of their questions correctly, but still have different Student Scores:

This is usually a result of where the incorrect answers were within the activity.

Questions will begin at an average level of difficulty. A student who gets answers wrong at the beginning will continue at an easier level and take time to progress to more challenging content.

A student who got all of their answers correct at the beginning has progressed quickly to more challenging questions. Although they may get some of these wrong, the difficulty level of the incorrect answers is much higher than the first student.

The pupil who answered the harder questions would receive a higher Student Score, because the score reflects both:

1. How many questions were answered correctly, and
2. How difficult those questions were