How Answer Validation and Grading Work in Pear Practice

When you assign a practice set or run a Live Practice, most question types are graded the moment a student submits an answer. Understanding how that evaluation works helps you author questions accurately, interpret reports correctly, and know when to step in and review student responses yourself.

How Correct Answers Are Determined

Pear Practice compares the student’s submitted answer against the correct response you defined when authoring the question. The matching logic varies by question type.

Question type	How Pear Practice evaluates the answer
Multiple choice	Exact match. The student’s selected option must match the marked correct response. If you enabled multiple correct responses, all selected options must match.
Text response	Flexible match. Pear Practice checks the student’s text against the correct response and any alternate correct responses you added. Spacing and punctuation may affect the match (see Case Sensitivity below).
Numerical	Exact match against the value you entered, including any prefix or suffix you defined.
Classification	Each item must be assigned to the correct category. Partial credit rules apply if you enabled partial credit.
Draw	Not evaluated automatically. Draw questions require your manual review.

When you add alternate correct responses to a text response or multiple choice question, Pear Practice accepts any of them as correct. Add alternates when common phrasings or abbreviations are equally valid answers.

Case Sensitivity

Pear Practice is not case-sensitive for text response questions. A student who types “photosynthesis” receives the same result as one who types “Photosynthesis” or “PHOTOSYNTHESIS.” Spacing and punctuation, however, may affect the match. If your correct response includes a period, comma, or specific spacing, a student’s response without those elements may not match. To reduce unexpected mismatches:

Avoid punctuation in your correct response unless it is part of the answer (for example, a chemical formula with a period is a different case than a sentence-ending period).
Add alternate correct responses to cover common variations in spacing or punctuation.
Use the preview feature to test the question as a student would answer it before assigning.

Accuracy Calculation

A student’s accuracy reflects the percentage of questions answered correctly across their practice activity. Pear Practice divides the number of correct answers by the total number of questions the student attempted. A few things that affect how accuracy is reported:

A score of 0% does not always mean a student skipped questions. If a student attempts every question but answers each one incorrectly on all available tries, their accuracy shows as 0%. This is the most common cause of unexpected 0% scores in classroom reports. Open the Questions tab in the assignment report to see each student’s individual responses and confirm whether they engaged with the content.
Retries count against accuracy. When a student answers a question incorrectly and tries again, only the correct answer is credited. The incorrect attempts still factor into the calculation. A student who answers every question correctly on the first try has a higher accuracy score than one who reaches the same correct answers after multiple tries.
Unattempted questions are excluded from the calculation. Accuracy reflects only the questions a student interacted with, not every question in the practice set.

Question Types That Are Not Auto-Graded

Draw questions are not evaluated automatically. When a student submits a Draw question response, it is queued for your review before it is included in any report. To review Draw question responses:

Open the assignment or Live Practice report.
Select the Questions tab.
Locate the Draw question and click Review Responses.
Mark each student’s drawing as correct or incorrect.

Until you review a Draw question, it does not count toward the student’s accuracy score. If you do not plan to grade Draw questions, consider whether a text response or multiple choice question better fits your reporting needs for that prompt.

Draw questions are available in Live Practices only. They are not included in assignments or standards-based reporting.

Partial Credit

Pear Practice supports partial credit for text response and classification questions. Partial credit is not available for multiple choice or numerical questions.

Question type	Partial credit available	How to enable it
Text response	Yes	Select Enable Partial Credit when authoring the question
Classification	Yes	Pear Practice awards partial credit automatically when some items are correctly categorized
Multiple choice	No	All selected options must match the correct response
Numerical	No	The answer must match exactly

When partial credit is enabled for a text response question, credit is awarded based on how closely the student’s response matches the correct response and any alternates you defined. If you need all-or-nothing grading for a text response question, leave Enable Partial Credit unselected. Students will receive full credit for any accepted response or no credit for an unmatched response. To view how partial credit affects a student’s score, open the assignment report and check the Questions tab for individual response details.

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How Answer Validation and Grading Work in Pear Practice