What are diagnostics?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What is a diagnostic? 
• How do diagnostics work?
• What do students experience in a diagnostic?
• How do I set my students more than one diagnostic?
• How to reset a diagnostic and why?

What is a diagnostic? 

Diagnostics are a set of assessment questions on a topic that help you to identify your students’ strengths and gaps in knowledge, either at a whole class level or for individual students. 

Data from these assessments helps CENTURY recommend the best nuggets for your students to study next so they can make progress quickly.

As soon as a course is assigned, diagnostics will appear in a student’s Recommended Path (RP) automatically. 

Note: Diagnostics are not visible from the My Courses tab, and will only appear in a student’s RP.

How do diagnostics work?

Each question in a diagnostic is linked to prerequisite nuggets. If a student struggles with a question, CENTURY will recommend the right nuggets to help them bridge their gaps in knowledge. Similarly, if a student has no trouble answering certain questions, CENTURY will know that the student already has a good understanding of the nugget. 

Teachers can set a diagnostic at the beginning or end of a topic to monitor students’ progress and assess their understanding. Results from the diagnostics and any gaps in knowledge can be seen on the Nuggets tab of the Teacher Dashboard. Students can then complete CENTURY’s nugget recommendations, or you can set nuggets via Assignments to address common misconceptions. 

What do students experience in a diagnostic?

Students will go through a series of questions on a topic, which should take 10 to 15 minutes to complete. There is no learning material to refer to and they do not receive feedback on whether they are answering questions correctly or incorrectly. They will not see their overall score at the end of the diagnostic. 

If a student does not know the answer, they can use the ‘I don’t know’ button. CENTURY can then personalise each student’s learning pathway to plug their gaps in knowledge by recommending the right nuggets for them. 

How do I set my students more than one diagnostic?

CENTURY is designed to get students learning as quickly as possible. This is why students see learning nuggets as soon as they complete a diagnostic. If you would like your students to do more than one diagnostic in one sitting, you will need to set these for your class using the Assignments feature.

How to reset a diagnostic and why? 

Diagnostics can only be completed once by students. If you need a student to resit or redo a diagnostic, you will need to reassign it using the Assignments feature.

Reasons you might want to reset a diagnostic:

• As a progress check - Some courses include a large diagnostic at the start, serving as a baseline assessment. We generally recommend that students redo these no more than three times per year.

• Returning learners - At the start of a new academic year, you might reset diagnostics for continuing students who are staying on the same course. This helps to realign their learning pathways with their current ability and provides insight into their starting point for the year.

• Topic diagnostics as an Assessment for Learning (AfL) tool -  They can be assigned at the beginning of a topic and again at the end to measure student progress and understanding.

Why CENTURY does not automatically reset diagnostics

CENTURY does not automatically reset completed diagnostics because schools, colleges and other organisations vary in:

• Academic year and term dates

• Organisation type and key stages

• Curriculum types and usage models

• Schemes of learning

• Class progress timings and student progress timings

• The reasons and contexts for which diagnostics might need resetting