Assessments in Mindsmith help learners practice what they’ve learned, reinforce key concepts, and give instructors a way to measure progress. You can add assessments inside a lesson as interactive tiles, or you can create a standalone assessment lesson that functions like an exam. Each approach has unique advantages depending on your training goals.
Try it yourself in the interactive lesson below:
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Types of Assessment Tiles
Methods of Creating Assessments
Adding Assessments Within a Lesson
Creating Assessments with the AI Assistant
Creating a Standalone Assessment
Grading Settings
Lesson-Level Grading Settings
Tile-Level Question Settings
Accessing Assessment Analytics
Types of Assessment Tiles
Mindsmith offers a variety of interactive tiles for checking understanding and gathering feedback. These tiles produce measurable results that appear in your grading analytics:
Multiple Choice
Learners select one correct answer from a list. Useful for testing recall and checking comprehension of key facts. You can also add images directly to your answer options.Select Multiple
Learners select all correct options from a list. This works best for scenarios where several answers could be right, such as identifying all steps in a process.Short Answer
Learners type their response into a text field. You can use AI-assisted grading to evaluate answers against key concepts and allow partial credit, or use Text Match grading for exact wording.Ranking
Learners arrange items in the correct order. Ranking is ideal for workflows, step-by-step procedures, or prioritization exercises.Matching
Learners pair items from two lists. Matching is commonly used for definitions, terminology, or pairing concepts with examples.Feedback
Learners provide a 1-to-5 star rating and an optional written response. This tile is ungraded and functions perfectly for end-of-course surveys or gathering learner opinions.
Methods of Creating Assessments
There are three core ways to create assessments within Mindsmith. Let's explore these in more detail:
Adding Assessments Within a Lesson
The first way to build assessments in Mindsmith is by embedding them directly into a lesson. This approach places practice or graded questions alongside the instructional content so learners can check their understanding as they move through the material.
To add an assessment tile to a lesson:
Open your lesson in the Editor.
Add a new page or click the + icon within an existing page.
Choose one of the assessment tile types (multiple choice, select multiple, short answer, ranking, matching, or feedback).
Write your question and add answer options.
Configure feedback, scoring, or retry options in the tile settings as needed.
Embedded assessments are especially useful for reinforcing concepts as they are introduced. For example, after explaining a new policy, you can include a quick multiple choice or ranking question to help learners process the information immediately.
Creating Assessments with the 🟣AI Assistant
Mindsmith’s AI Assistant gives you another way to add assessments without building each tile manually. From the bottom toolbar, you can prompt the assistant to generate questions directly inside your lesson.
For example, you might type:
“Create a five-question multiple-choice and ranking assessment based on the information on this page.”
“Add a short assessment to reinforce the concept of workplace safety introduced here.”
The AI Assistant will then generate question tiles in real time, aligned to the content already in your lesson. You can edit, reorder, or remove any of the generated questions to fit your needs.
⚡ Tip: This approach is especially useful when you want to quickly reinforce a single page or concept without planning a full exam. It also helps speed up lesson creation by turning your instructional text into immediate practice opportunities.
Creating a Standalone Assessment
Mindsmith also supports assessments that exist as their own lessons. A standalone assessment functions as a quiz or exam that can be assigned separately from instructional content. This option works best for compliance checks, certification exams, or end-of-course evaluations.
To create a standalone assessment:
From the Dashboard, click the Create button.
Select More Options.
Click Create Assessment.
Enter instructions for the type of assessment you want to build. You can write a simple prompt, and Mindsmith will expand it into a detailed request that the AI can use.
Mindsmith generates a draft assessment with questions and tiles based on your input.
Open the draft in the Editor to review, reorder, or refine the questions.
This workflow allows you to generate full exams in minutes. For example, you can enter “Build a 10-question assessment on workplace cybersecurity basics,” and Mindsmith will create a structured assessment that you can immediately edit and deploy.
Grading Settings
Mindsmith gives you two layers of control over how assessments are scored and how learners receive feedback: lesson-level grading settings and tile-level question settings.
Lesson-Level Grading Settings
You can configure overall grading rules in the Lesson Settings (⚙️) panel located in the top-right toolbar. These settings apply across the entire lesson or standalone assessment:
Passing Percentage – Define the minimum score required to pass.
Question Retries – Decide whether learners can attempt a question again, and how many times.
Completion Criteria – Choose what must be done for the lesson to count as complete:
Pass the assessment
View all lesson pages and complete the assessment (default)
Complete all interactive elements
Certificates – Automatically issue a certificate of completion when learners pass the assessment.
These controls are ideal when you need to set clear standards for an entire lesson or exam. For example, you might require learners to pass with an 80% minimum and complete every interactive tile before they finish.
Tile-Level Question Settings
You can also customize how each individual question behaves. To access these options, click on the assessment tile in the Editor and open the Options menu.
[INSERT SCREENSHOTS: Form settings vs. Assessment settings]
General tile-level settings include:
Graded Toggle (Assessment vs. Form Mode) – Turn off the "Graded" switch to convert a scored question into an ungraded survey or practice question.
Contributing to Score – Choose whether a graded question counts toward the learner’s overall lesson grade.
Final Feedback Mode – Decide how much feedback learners get after answering. Silent hides all feedback and prevents retries, Wrong Only highlights incorrect answers, and Full provides complete feedback.
Tile-specific settings include:
Multiple Choice Feedback Mode – Choose between Correct / Incorrect (basic right/wrong feedback) or By Option (custom feedback tailored to the specific answer choice they selected).
Short Answer Grading Type – Choose AI to have the system evaluate concepts and allow partial credit. Choose Text Match to require an exact or close spelling match.
Short Answer Grading Examples – Add examples of correct, partial, and incorrect responses to help train the AI on how to grade learner inputs accurately.
Tile-level controls are valuable when you want to adjust the learner experience question by question. For instance, you might want one multiple-choice question to give detailed feedback by option, while another question operates silently like a formal exam.
⚡ Tip: Use lesson-level settings to establish the overall rules of the assessment, and tile-level settings to fine-tune the experience on a case-by-case basis. The combination gives you flexibility to design assessments that fit both high-stakes testing and low-stakes practice.
Accessing Assessment Analytics
Once learners complete an assessment, you can track performance through the Analytics panel in the Editor. Analytics help you measure how well learners understand content, identify where they struggle, and evaluate the overall effectiveness of your training.
How to Open Analytics
From the Editor, navigate to the top-right menu bar.
Click the bar chart icon labeled Analytics.
A new panel will open showing two tabs:
Results – Learner progress, completions, average scores, and question performance.
Engagement – Data on how learners interacted with the lesson, including starts, completions, and unique viewers.
If you are on a supported plan, you can also select Export PDF in the top-right corner to download a report.
Plan Tiers and Analytics Access
Analytics availability depends on your subscription:
Free Plan – Assessments can be created, but analytics are not available.
Professional Plan – Access lesson-level Analytics, including total completions and average scores.
Business+ Plans – Unlock Analytics by Learner for individual performance tracking, plus PDF export of results and custom reporting capabilities.
👉 For more detail on interpreting data and tracking learner progress, see our full Analytics Guide.
⚡Tip: Even if you’re on the Free Plan and don’t have access to Analytics, you can still provide learners with rich feedback inside each question tile. Use the Feedback Modes in the tile settings to explain why an answer is right or wrong, helping reinforce learning in real time.