Decide between awarding marks or red/green
There are two marking modes in MiniTest. Choose the one that suits the purpose of your assessment.
- Award numerical marks — grade each response with a specific number of marks.
- Use red/green — categorise each response as incorrect or correct, without assigning marks.
Award numerical marks for summative assessment
Mock exams and other department tests often include multi-mark problem-solving and reasoning questions, so numerical marking is most appropriate. It gives each question the right weighting and records each student's total, making it ideal for determining predicted grades or evaluating overall performance.
Use red/green marking for formative assessment
Red/green marking is ideal for short, frequent diagnostic tests. For example, many schools use fortnightly one-page tests to identify which topics are secure and which need reteaching. For these tests, you only need to know whether each student understands the topic or does not yet understand it. Red/green marking is well suited to this because it is so quick.
Each question should assess one skill in isolation. For example, a question might test "Expand double brackets with negatives". Avoid questions that span multiple topics or involve complex problem-solving, because if students get it red then that doesn't tell us much about their gaps in understanding — perhaps they got confused by one of the topics, but we don't know which one, or perhaps they struggled with the overall reasoning. The whole point is to use questions which, when marked as red or green, uncover useful insights into students' understanding.
Comparison table
There are several differences between the two marking modes.
| Feature | Use red/green | Award numerical marks |
|---|---|---|
| Use case | Best for short formative assessments | Best for summative assessments, including mock exams |
| Formative assessment | check_circle Red/green marking is ideal for assessing topic-level understanding. You can easily identify knowledge gaps and address them through responsive teaching. | remove_circle Questions which involve reasoning and/or span multiple topics don't have the same diagnostic value, because they are not designed to assess isolated skills. You can still view an automated question-level analysis (QLA) grid. |
| Summative assessment | remove_circle In the printouts and feedback emails, totals are not shown. This helps students focus on their strengths and development areas. | check_circle Marks are recorded for each question, and student totals are displayed on the summary screen, printouts, and feedback emails. |
| Rapid marking | check_circle Quickly select Red/Green or press R/G on the keyboard. | check_circle Award marks by annotating ticks or using the number keys 0-9. This is still much faster than marking on paper. |
| AI marking | check_circle AI can award red or green for each response. | check_circle AI can determine how many marks to award for each response. |
| Question Bank | check_circle Optionally, you can build tests from the built-in question bank or reuse your own pre-made questions. | cancel The question bank is not available. |
| Tracking over time | check_circle Set up trackers to monitor understanding across a range of tests and view progress over time. Students can see which topics they've improved since previous tests. | cancel Results do not count towards topic trackers. |
| Anonymous marking | cancel You can see student names while marking. | check_circle Student names are hidden by default, to protect against unconscious bias. You can override this by adding ?showNames=true to the URL. |
| Moderation tools | cancel The Red/Green approach is low-stakes and does not require moderation. | check_circle Questions which are tricky to mark can be flagged for moderation and later reviewed as a team. |