Practice and assessment scenarios

Every scenario has a purpose: Practice or Assessment. The purpose controls how the scenario is marked and what learners see when they finish. You set it in the Settings step of the scenario editor, and you can filter the Scenarios page by purpose.

Practice scenarios

Practice scenarios are designed for learning. When a learner finishes:

They can choose to self-mark the checklist or use AI marking
They can see the checklist and model answers for any questions
They can review their results in full

Practice is the default purpose for new scenarios.

Assessment scenarios

Assessment scenarios are designed for formal evaluation. When a learner finishes:

The conversation is marked by AI only - learners cannot self-mark
Learners do not see their marking results, model answers, AI feedback or score
Staff reviewing the session still see everything, including the checklist and scores

Use assessment when you want a consistent, AI-marked result and you don't want learners to see the marking detail.

In the Settings step, Materials learners can view lets you choose which materials learners can open from the scenario's introduction page before they start - for example the checklist as a pre-session guide, or the questions they will be asked.

This works for both purposes. On an assessment scenario, anything you opt into here is available before the session, while the post-session results stay hidden. That suits a workflow where students use the checklist to prepare and facilitators review the AI marking afterwards.

Marking against the checklist

In the Checklist step you can turn marking on or off with Mark users against the checklist.

When marking is on, the learner receives a score based on the checklist
When marking is off, the conversation is not scored. This is useful for open-ended practice where a score isn't meaningful

The score is the percentage of checklist items the learner completed. Marking is always on for assessment scenarios.

Self-marking and AI marking (practice only)

In a practice scenario, the learner chooses how to mark the conversation:

Self mark - the learner reviews the transcript and ticks the checklist items they completed
AI marking - the AI marks the checklist automatically against the transcript. The learner can review and adjust the result afterwards

In an assessment scenario, AI marking is always used and the learner cannot adjust it.

Questions and self-assessment

If your scenario includes post-scenario questions, you can:

Add a model answer to each question
Enable self-assessment, so learners mark their own answer as correct or incorrect
Require learners to answer everything, using Require users to answer all questions before completing the scenario

In assessment scenarios, model answers and self-assessment are hidden from learners after the session.

What learners and staff see

Whatever the purpose, administrators, cohort leads and assessors always see the full detail for their learners - the transcript, checklist, scores and answers - when reviewing a session. See Reviewing user activity and transcripts.

For the learner's side of marking and results, see Understanding your results and feedback.

Updated on: 07/09/2026

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