Premium 2.2: AI Distractors, Spaced Repetition, Curves & Branching

Hot on the heels of the PressPrimer Quiz 2.2 release, version 2.2 updates are now available for the Educator, School, and Enterprise add-ons. These are huge releases, with a number of disruptive features we’ve been working toward since we first launched. Most of the new capabilities are completely unique to the WordPress space.

Here’s what’s new.

AI Distractor Generation

Writing effective wrong answers is one of the hardest parts of building multiple choice quizzes. A good distractor needs to be believable enough for someone who doesn’t fully understand the material to pick, but clearly wrong to someone who knows the context. Most quiz builders make instructors create all of the distractors.

In the 2.2 release of the Educator plugin, it’s now possible to generate distractors using OpenAI. Just choose a question (or even an entire question bank), the AI will read it and the existing answers, and the AI will generate plausible distractors. Each suggestion goes through a review process where you can edit, approve, or reject distractors before they get added to the question.

For bulk operations, you can run distractor generation across an entire question bank. A progress tracker shows what’s happening, and you can review distractors as they’re generated. The bulk tool is useful if you’ve imported a large set of questions, or if you have a library that perhaps has a few distractors but you want to expand it so each question has a certain number of answer choices.

Assignment reminder emails

Also in the Educator add-on, assignments can now trigger reminder emails to students who haven’t completed them before the deadline. You configure reminder windows (perhaps 3 days before it’s due and again 1 day before the due date), and the system sends reminder emails automatically. The new email template for reminders is fully customizable.

You can set up and preview reminder emails from PressPrimer Quiz > Settings > Email. This is what it looks like:

Curve grading

Sometimes a quiz is harder than what was intended, or perhaps other factors have affected the performance of a class. The new curve grading system in the School add-on lets you adjust scores for students after the fact without editing the quiz itself.

The new settings are under PressPrimer Quiz > Reports in the new Curve Grading report. Just select a quiz, then you’ll find four curve methods that can be applied to grades (for all students if you’re an admin, or for students in your group if you have the Teacher role):

1. Percentage boost adds a flat percentage to all scores.
2. Square root applies a square root curve (benefits lower scores more than higher ones).
3. Linear scale maps the current score range to a new range.
4. Target median shifts scores so the median hits a specific target.

Each method shows a before and after chart, as well as an impact table so you can see scores for each student that’s affected. Curve grading is non-destructive, so you can undo any changes or adjust the curve method. Scores that are changed by a curve are only visible from this page, and to students in the front end when they view their list of graded quiz assignments. Original scores are used in other reports, shown on quiz result pages, and elsewhere. When grades have been updated by a curve, students will also see a note about how the score was modified based on a curve in their assignment list.

Spaced repetition

This is a feature we’ve been aspiring to offer since day one. The research is clear: reviewing material at increasing intervals is one of the most effective ways to move knowledge from short-term to long-term memory (source). PressPrimer Quiz now supports exactly that.

The School add-on uses the popular SM-2 algorithm to track per-question mastery for each student. When a student answers a question, the algorithm calculates when they should see it again based on how well they answered. Questions they answered incorrectly are shown again sooner, while questions they answered confidently are scheduled for a later time.

Students get a new review dashboard that shows mastery statistics and a list of questions due for review. They can then generate a dynamic review quiz from the questions that are due and complete them immediately. There’s even an email reminder system to make sure students remember to complete questions that are due for review. Instructors get a new report to see how students are performing and progressing towards mastery.

This feature is directly related to the learning science principles we often write about on this blog. Quizzes aren’t just about testing. They’re one of the most powerful tools to reinforce learning, and spaced repetition makes that process a lot more effective.

Branching logic

The Enterprise add-on gets one new feature in the 2.2 release, and it’s a huge addition. Branching logic is now available to quizzes, letting you create rules that skip or jump to specific questions based on how a student answers. If a student gets a really basic question wrong, maybe they take a branching path that allows follow-up questions. If they get it right, they skip ahead to more advanced material. This makes quizzes adaptive, so you don’t have to build out multiple quizzes if you need different paths.

Branching rules are set up right inside the quiz editor from a new Branching tab. Just set up the rules and behavior you want to use here; the system automatically records what paths students actually take, and you can review the paths after completion from the Recent Attempts report and elsewhere.

Updating

It’s important that you update all of your PressPrimer Quiz plugins to 2.2 versions in order to use the new features. All dependency checks happen automatically, but you won’t be able to use the new features unless everything has been updated.

If you’re new to PressPrimer Quiz, visit our pricing page to see all of the features that are available now for each of the tiers.

We hope you find the new features useful! We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.