Welcome to Akindi!
This guide will walk you through how to run a paper assessment with Akindi handling automatic question scrambling. Students will complete the assessment in-person with a paper and writing utensil.
If you wish to manage your own question content in Akindi Classic, create an Online Assessment or use Akindi’s Question Importer, please see the relevant article.
1. Create your Akindi Account
💡 Does your school have the Akindi LMS integration? Most Akindi customer schools have Akindi integrated into their Learning Management System.
Select the LMS that your school uses for specific instructions about accessing Akindi.
If your school does not have the Akindi LMS integration, you can create your Akindi account here.
2. Creating a Course & Uploading a Course Roster
This step will be done automatically when using the LMS Integration. You can skip to step 3.
Before creating an assessment in Akindi, you have to create a course and upload a class roster.
1. To create a course in Akindi:
Click 'Create Course' on the left-hand menu.
Confirm that you will be creating an ‘Akindi-only course’ - this means that it won’t be connected to an LMS course shell.
Enter the Assessment Name, Click ‘Create’.
The course will be added to the left-hand menu.
2. To upload a class roster to Akindi:
Select the course from the left-hand menu.
Click 'Upload Roster'.
Click 'Upload Student Roster' and select an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV (.csv) that contains the Student IDs and Student Name. Akindi will automatically recognize the students' names, ID numbers, section numbers, and emails but you can double check this by clicking 'Preview Changes'.
Click 'Upload Roster'.
For a more in-depth guide to uploading a class roster, check out this guide.
3. Create Assessment
1. To get started, click the ‘Create Assessment’ button in the upper-right corner.
2. Select your course from the drop down menu
3. Create your assessment by either:
Importing an existing .docx file into Akindi or
Start with a blank document to create your assessment from scratch
Import Question Content Document
To import an existing question content as a Word file (docx.), click on “Import Questions (.docx)”
2. “Select file to upload” and choose your desired assessment file from your device
3. Click “Upload”
Once your file has been uploaded, your screen will populate with your document’s question content.
To learn more about how to format your question document, refer to our document formatting article.
Start blank document
Select "Start blank document"
To create your assessment directly in Akindi, click on “Add question”
Begin typing your question content
Press "Enter" to add answer option
Click on the digital bubble to select the correct answer(s)
4. Review your Answer Key
In your docx. file, the correct answer(s) should be bolded. Akindi will automatically identify and set the answer key for your assessment.
If you need to edit your answer key, click on the digital bubble. You can edit your answer key at any point - even after test sheets have been uploaded.
For advance marking options, click on the slider icon next to the question. For a more in-depth look at advance marking options, check out this article.
When all issues have been resolved, click "Next"
5. Enable Automatic Question Scrambling and Answer Scrambling
You are now ready to scramble your question content and scramble your answer options in your multi-versions assessment
Scramble Questions
Select the "Scramble Question" toggle
From the drop down menu, select the desired number of scrambled versions
Akindi will automatically scramble the questions and provide a preview for each version
Scramble Answers
Select the "Scramble Answers" toggle
When "Scramble Answers" toggle is selected, Akindi will automatically detect "All of the above" or "None of the above" answer options
A lock icon will appear, indicating these answer options will not be scrambled and will remain in the last position
2. From the drop down menu, select the desired number of scrambled versions
Scramble both Questions and Answers
To scramble both questions and answers, select both toggles
To see the mapping of scrambled questions against the original document, click “Show Mapping” button.
When ready, click ‘Next’
6. Customize Bubble sheets
Customize your Bubble Sheets by completing the fields on the left-hand side.
Based on the number of questions and responses on your assessment, select the test sheet layout that best fits your needs. Akindi will ignore any unused bubbles.
If desired, choose to prefill the bubble sheets with the student names and IDs. This will give you a unique test sheet for each student in your roster.
2. When ready, click ‘Next’
7. Format Documents & Download Scrambled Assessments and Bubble Sheets
Adjust your document's format
Drag along the slider to adjust the document's margins, font size, or line spacing
Select the toggle to create a separate cover page
By default, as a way of saving paper, "Allow horizontal answers" toggle will already be selected. Deselect if preferred.
Preview your documents
Click through the Version previews to see your scrambled documents
When ready, click “Download”.
📁 A zip file of the following documents will be generated and saved onto your device:
Blank Bubble Sheets
Original Question Content document
Individual PDFs of scrambled versions of the assessment content
3. Print the Bubble Sheets using any printer paper, ensuring the four corner squares and QR code are successfully printed on the test sheets.
If you chose to prefill the test sheets with student information, you will have a test sheet for each student in your roster. If not, you will have a single blank test sheet.
If you are running a multi-version assessment, there will be blank version bubbles which the students will use to indicate their version.
8. Administer the Test to Students
On the day of your assessment:
Hand out the bubble sheets to the students (just like a Scantron sheet).
The students can complete the bubble sheets using any writing utensil - a pencil of any kind, pen of any colour.
💡 Ready to run your assessment? Ensure you have the following things printed and ready for your assessment:
Akindi bubble sheets
Scrambled Test questions
8. Scan Completed Bubble Sheets
After the assessment, collect the completed bubble sheets to be scanned.
Use any scanner with a document feeder to scan the test sheets into a PDF. You will upload this PDF to Akindi in the next step.
Akindi will digitally sort the test sheets by section and version, and even rotate test sheet that were scanned upside-down.
💡 Recommended scanning settings:
Up-to 100 test sheets per batch
100 DPI resolution
Because each scanner is slightly different, we are unable to provide specific instructions for your school’s scanner, but here is how most scanners work:
Put the stack of completed test sheets on the document feeder on the scanner.
Click the ‘Scan’ option on the scanner’s display screen.
The scanner will walk you through a few steps including entering an email address to which the PDF will be sent.
Click the ‘Scan’ button.
Within a few minutes, you will receive an email with a PDF of the scanned test sheets attach. You will upload this PDF to Akindi.
9. Upload Scanned Test Sheets
To upload the PDF of your students' completed bubble sheets to be graded by Akindi:
a) Log into your Akindi account, click ‘Upload Response Sheets’ on your course dashboard.
b) Select the PDF file containing the scanned bubble sheets.
c) Click ‘Upload’.
Once the PDF has been uploaded, Akindi will begin the grading process. It takes about 1-2 seconds per test sheet to be graded.
💡 Once the test sheets have begun to be graded, you can leave or exit the browser tab and Akindi will continue to grade the test sheets in the background.
10. Resolving Exceptions in Review & Fix
When scanning the test sheets, exceptions are called when bubble sheet information is missing, mis-read, or unclear.
You can find these exceptions under the "Review & Fix" tab once the upload has been completed. To learn more about resolving Review & Fix exceptions, check out this article.
11. Analyzing the Results
Akindi Results are broken down into three separate tabs:
Overview
Graphs
Responses
Each tab helps you understand two main questions:
1) How well the students performed, and
2) How well the test questions performed.
The Overview Tab
The ‘Overview’ tab gives you a snapshot of your assessment’s overall performance. Think of it as your “at-a-glance” dashboard for results.
What it shows:
Average Results: The mean score across all students responses. This can be sorted by the hardest and easiest questions.
Discriminatory Score: The discriminatory score shows the relationship between students correctly answering each question and their overall performance on the assessment. This can be sorted by the most effective and least effective questions.
To learn more about the Discriminatory Score and how it is calculated, check out this article.
Score Distribution: For each question, a bar chart shows the % of student responses for each answer combination
💡 Since question content has been uploaded to Akindi, analytics and results are shown alongside the corresponding content. Saving you time from manual cross referencing!
The Graphs Tab
The ‘Graphs’ tab contains the item analysis of all your questions, making it easy to spot patterns and trends at a glance.
What it shows:
Students Marks: Quickly compare performance across your class, and identify any outliers in student performance
Grade Distribution: See how many students fell into each grade band or score range
Answer Breakdown: Identify questions that were misunderstood or too difficult.
Point Biserial: Review questions with negative or low values to decide whether they should be revised or removed from future assessments.
The Responses Tab
The ‘Responses’ tab is the full spreadsheet view of all the students and their individual grades.
What it shows:
Individual Student Recorded Responses: The answers Akindi detected for each question, highlighted alongside the correct answer key.
Student Score Summary: The student’s total marks, percentage, and number of correct/incorrect responses.
💡 The response chart is editable! You can edit student responses and your answer key directly in this chart. Double click on the cell you want to edit to change the student response. To edit you answer key, click on the pencil icon next to the question number.
How to read the responses chart
By default, Questions are displayed in original order.
Answers are scrambled and are shown here as the students see them on their bubble sheets
To see questions in scrambled order, select the desired version from the drop down menu.
Looking to add marks from a hand graded, non-multiple choice portion of the assessment? Learn how to enter hand-graded marks into Akindi.
12. Exporting Test Results
a) To Send the grades to your LMS Gradebook:
Click the ‘Send Grades to LMS’ button.
Select the desired grade item you wish to send the grades to.
Click ‘Send"
b) There are a number of other ways to export the results using the 'Actions' dropdown menu.
Download Responses CSV: Spreadsheet containing all students' grades.
Download question breakdown CSV: Spreadsheet containing question item analysis.
Email students their grades: Sends each student a secure link to access their individual student report.
Download Student Reports: A PDF containing each students corrected test sheet.
Upcoming Feature Release
Akindi is continuously evolving to make assessment creation, delivery, and analysis easier and more powerful. Check out our release schedule to see what’s available now and what’s coming soon.
Questions? Feedback?
We are are here to help! Feel free to search our Help Center or reach out to via our live in-app chat.