Welcome to the Test Prep 4 Assessment User Interface Guide!
So you’re ready to check your skills, great! We don’t want to get between you and showing off your knowledge, so once you start a Drill, Diagnostic, or Practice Exam you’ll notice the page design changes into our Assessment Interface. This hides the main menu and gives you a different set of controls. You can return to the main menu by clicking Pause and Save or, if you’re done answering questions, with the I’m Done button, both at the top right of the screen.
This page has 3 parts, like a bad haircut.
- Top - Test Info and Controls
- Middle - Questions and Answers
- Bottom - Navigation bar
Top - Test Info and Controls
The top area contains your progress and controls for pausing or finishing the assessment.
From left to right:
- Shmoop logo - we always put it there.
- The name of the Diagnostic, Drill or Practice Exam
- Your progress - The pink and grey progress bar fills in as you answer more questions.
- Time left in the test - This will only show if the test is timed.
- Pause and Save
- I’m Done
If you have to pause your exam for any reason, hit “Pause and Save” to save your answers and you can continue where you left off later.
Once you’ve answered the questions, select “I’m Done” to exit the test and get your scores.
Middle - Questions and Answers
The main area of the assessment interface contains:
- Test Instructions
- The Question and Answer area
- The Passage (if this question has a passage)
1 - Test Instructions
The test instructions explain what to do in the assessment and how the test works. There are often important details in these, so make sure you read them at least once! If you’ve finished reading them you can click Hide at the bottom to collapse the Test Instructions. You can always click Show at the top of this area to see the Test Instructions again. Since you had so much fun reading them the first time.
2 - The Question and Answer area
Here is the usual question number followed by the question. What a classic!
Under that, you’ll find the Answer area, where you can click an answer to select it or answer the question in a different way. Thanks, Math.
Once you enter an answer, the Next button at the bottom of the screen will proceed to the next question.
In the top right, you’ll see a little Flag and Question mark, which lets you tag a question to review later.
Flag for later is like a bookmark, letting you easily jump back to this question. If you hit Next without selecting an answer, the question will automatically be flagged. Your Flagged questions will appear in the bottom navigation bar.
Mark as guess is something just for you! Clicking this will not change your score, but lets you know what was a guess when you’re looking at the assessment report later.
3 - The Passage
The passage section has the reading material you will need to reference in order to answer the question.
If there are multiple Passages, you can switch between them by clicking their titles. Clicking Passage B will bring up the text of passage B.
Bottom - Navigation bar
The bottom banner is your main method of navigating the assessment itself. It contains controls for navigating back and forward in the questions, jump controls to a specific question, a list of questions you skipped or flagged, and a list of questions marked as guesses.
Click the Jump to a Question button at the bottom of the screen to bring up the Navigation bar.
From left to right:
- This will take you back to the previous question.
- Selecting a number will navigate to that question.
- The “Jump to a Question”/“Hide” button allows you to hide or reveal the jump, flagged, and guesses lists.
- Flagged questions are ones you either skipped or specifically marked with a flag. You can click these buttons to navigate to that question.
- The “Guesses” section has buttons that link to questions you marked as a guess.
- This will take you to the next question.