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 build an entire lesson of questions that functions like a standalone exam.
Try it yourself in the interactive lesson below:
Jump to Section
Types of Assessment Tiles
Methods of Creating Assessments
Adding Assessments Within a Lesson
Creating Assessments with the Mindsmith Agent
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 rating — a 1-to-5 star scale or a 10-point scale — 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 two 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 Mindsmith Agent
The Mindsmith Agent gives you another way to add assessments without building each tile manually. From the agent's input bar at the bottom of the editor, you can prompt it 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 Mindsmith Agent 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.
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. Under Scoring, these settings apply across the entire lesson or assessment:
Passing Percentage – The minimum score required to pass (or "No requirement").
Question Retries – How many times a learner can retry a question — none, 1–4, or unlimited.
Scored Content – Whether the whole lesson counts toward the score (All Content) or only a Specific Section you choose.
Completion Criteria – What a learner must do for the lesson to count as complete:
Assessment Only – pass the assessment
Assessment and View – view all pages and complete the assessment (default)
Require Interactives – Optionally require learners to interact with every interactive tile (flashcards, accordions, hot buttons, sorting, and the like) before finishing.
To issue a certificate when learners pass, use the Certificate tab in the same Settings panel.
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.
General tile-level settings include:
Question Mode (Assessment or Form) – Switch a tile to Form mode to convert a scored question into an ungraded survey or practice question. In Form mode, the learner can submit any response without it being marked right or wrong, and it does not count toward their score. This is how you make a question optional or skippable — set it to Form mode and it will not block the learner's progress or affect their grade.
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 — The learner receives no visual indication of whether their answer was correct or incorrect. No checkmark, no feedback text, and no correct answer reveal. The submit button is also hidden after answering.
Wrong Only — Incorrect answers show a red X icon and feedback text (if available) while the learner still has retries. Correct answers receive no visual indicator — no green checkmark and no feedback text. The correct answer is never revealed.
Full — Learners see a green checkmark for correct answers, a red X for incorrect answers, and a yellow question mark for partially correct answers (short answer tiles). Feedback text is shown when available. After all retries are used, the correct answer is revealed.
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.
AI Grading: The AI reads the learner's response and evaluates it against the correct answer you've provided, as well as any grading examples. It understands synonyms, paraphrasing, and partial answers. Use this when learners should explain a concept in their own words.
Text Match: The system compares the learner's input directly to your accepted answers. It supports close matches (minor typos, case differences). Use this for factual answers with a single correct response, like a specific term or number.
Short Answer Grading Examples – Add examples of correct, partial, and incorrect responses to help train the AI on how to grade learner inputs accurately. When using AI grading, provide at least 2–3 examples across the correct, partial, and incorrect categories. The more examples you add, the more consistently the AI will grade responses that fall into gray areas.
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.
Conditional Logic
Question tiles support conditional page navigation based on whether the learner answers correctly or incorrectly. This allows you to route learners to different pages depending on their performance — for example, sending learners who answer incorrectly to a review page, or skipping ahead for learners who demonstrate mastery.
To set up conditional logic:
Click on the question tile in the Editor.
Click the Logic button in the tile editor menu.
Set the If Correct Go To dropdown to choose which page the learner navigates to when they answer correctly. The default is "Next Page."
Set the If Incorrect Go To dropdown to choose the destination for incorrect answers. You can select any page in the lesson, or choose "Retry Page" to keep the learner on the same page.
Note: Conditional logic only applies when there is a single question tile on the page. This feature requires a Professional or Business+ plan.
⚡ 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 plan:
Free – Build and share lessons, but analytics aren't available.
Professional and up – View the full Results and Engagement tabs, including completions, average scores, per-page engagement, and per-learner detail.
Business+ – Everything above, plus export your results to CSV or PDF.
👉 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.