Use this guide as a reference — jump to whichever part matches what you're working on right now, or read straight through if you're getting started with Assessments for the first time.
Part 1 — Intelligent Question Generation
Every assessment starts with telling Kira what you need. Just describe it in plain language, and Kira's AI takes care of the setup.
1.1 Quick start with natural language
Natural language input — simply describe your needs in the homepage input box. Kira automatically extracts the subject, grade level, and quantity of questions from your description.
Auto parameter filling — once Kira identifies your intent, it configures the metadata in the background. All you need to do is click Generate.
1.2 Intent-aware setup
Kira supports natural language prompts paired with smart tags, so it can parse your teaching intent in real time. These tags include:
Subject — identifies subject information such as History, Calculus, or Biology.
Core Concepts — extracts specific knowledge points, such as “Limits and derivatives” or “American Civil War.”
Grade Level — identifies the target student group, such as 7th Grade or Introductory College level.
Difficulty Level — parses difficulty requirements from your description (Easy / Medium / Hard).
Goal — understands the specific purpose of the assessment, such as Quiz, Midterm, or Unit Test.
1.3 Five core scenarios
Kira supports five ways to start building an assessment, depending on what you're working with:
Upload Document — whatever you upload, Kira tests on it, keeping your assessment content grounded in a single source of truth. You can upload materials at varying difficulty levels to support IEP needs.
Upload Existing Exam — digitize a PDF or Word exam with one click. No manual entry needed — instantly bring your legacy materials into Kira.
Course and Lessons — generate structured, comprehensive exams that cover an entire unit, ensuring broad knowledge coverage and keeping questions on-topic.
Quick Test — rapidly generate a low-pressure in-class quiz to spot knowledge gaps on the spot.
Timed Exam — set up a serious, fair assessment environment for midterms or finals.
Part 2 — Review & Edit
Once your assessment is generated, you'll land on the Editor page — this is where teaching rigor is ensured, and where you have the final say on every question.
2.1 Editing & validation
Question navigation
The left sidebar clearly displays every question number and type, supports click-to-jump navigation, and includes a [+ Add Question] button so you can add questions at any time. Supported question types include Multiple Choice, Fill in the Blank, Coding, Free Response, and Essay.
Rich text question editing
You can modify question stems and answer options directly. For multiple choice questions, you can flexibly toggle between “Single Answer” and “Multiple Answers” modes.
Points
Each question has an independently configurable point value in the upper right corner, so you can weight questions exactly how you want.
Question settings
In the Question Settings panel, you can view and adjust:
The currently selected Rubric
The included scoring dimensions (Criteria)
The corresponding total point value
Within this panel, you can also fine-tune:
Standards — select the appropriate official standards (e.g., NGSS, Common Core) based on your subject.
Skills — under the selected standard, Kira automatically displays a dropdown of associated skills, and you can check one or more for each question.
Rubric — for subjective question types like Free Response, Essay, and Coding, configure detailed rubrics with multiple scoring dimensions (e.g., logical rigor, grammatical accuracy, code execution efficiency).
Flexible switching — select from your existing rubric library, or click [Change Rubric] on a specific question to keep your evaluation tool aligned with the assessment's goal.
Bloom's Taxonomy — set the cognitive depth of a question (Remember, Understand, Apply, and so on).
Difficulty — label a question as Easy, Medium, or Hard.
Error validation
Kira automatically checks your work as you go. If a question stem is empty, there are fewer than 2 options, no correct answer is selected, or the point value is 0, you'll see a real-time warning via a red border or error text. These are blocking errors — they prevent a flawed assessment from being published to students.
2.2 Assign to students
Once your editing is complete, click [Assign] to configure exactly how and when students will receive the assessment. You can distribute based on class progress or individual student needs, with the following core options:
Schedule Type — choose Live Session for synchronous, real-time classroom use, or Schedule for Later for asynchronous homework and independent practice. (Both are covered in depth in Part 3.)
Time Limit & Duration — set a Time Limit for the maximum minutes per attempt, and add Extra Session Duration (5 / 10 / 15 minutes) as buffer time so students aren't penalized for network hiccups.
Grading Method — choose AI Grading, Manual Grading, or a mix of both.
Add Classes or Students — assign to an entire class, or filter down to specific individual students for small-scale quizzes or make-up tests.
Part 3 — Assign to Students
Kira supports two distinct assignment modes, so you can match the assessment format to how your class is actually learning: live and synchronous, or flexible and asynchronous.
3.1 Live Session
Live Session is built for synchronous teaching. It lets you launch an assessment in real time during class and monitor every student's progress and behavior as they work.
One-click launch & timer
After you click [Start Now], the assessment immediately becomes visible to students and the system enters timed mode. The timer starts simultaneously for every student, keeping the official start and end time consistent across the class.
Multi-dimensional response monitoring
The monitoring panel shows each student's participation status in real time, with heat maps or icons indicating how the class is doing on each question.
Flexible exam controls
Pause — temporarily halt the session for the whole class.
Force End — clicking [End Session] immediately terminates all responses and forces submission.
Anti-cheating integration
Kira quietly monitors for tab switching during a Live Session. Once a student reaches your preset threshold (e.g., 5 tab switches), their status automatically changes to Locked and they can't continue answering until you unlock them.
Live Session status matrix
Here's how student status flows through a Live Session, and what you can do at each stage:
Status | Trigger Condition | Teacher Actions | Student View |
Not Started | Assessment published, student hasn't clicked start | Settings / Remove | Upcoming / Start |
In Progress | Student is actively answering | Pause / Force Submit | Continue |
Locked | Tab-switch violations reached threshold | Unlock | Locked (shows lock reason) |
Unlocked | Teacher clicks Unlock | — | Continue (resumes answering) |
Paused | Teacher manually pressed pause | Resume | Paused |
Completed | Self-submitted or force-submitted | Grade / Graded | View Results |
3.2 Schedule for Later
Schedule for Later is designed for asynchronous work — homework, weekly quizzes, or independent practice — where students complete the assessment on their own time within a window you set.
Available period
Available From — the earliest date and time students can begin the assessment.
Available Until — the final deadline. Once this time passes, students who haven't submitted can no longer access the assessment.
Time limit within the window
Even within a long availability window, you can still cap how long a student has once they click Start (e.g., 60 minutes), keeping the assessment fair and consistent.
Student status flow
Upcoming — before the Available From time, the student-side button is greyed out and non-clickable.
Not Started — once the window opens, the button activates and changes to Start.
Why teachers like it
No real-time monitoring required — set the publish and deadline times once, and Kira automatically opens and closes access on schedule. This is especially useful for asynchronous work spread across multiple classes or time periods.
Real-time progress tracking — even while you're offline, Kira records each student's progress in the background, so you can check in anytime to see who's finished and who needs a reminder.
Part 4 — Session Monitoring
The Session Monitoring page gives you comprehensive, real-time visibility into an assessment while it's underway — or after it wraps up.
4.1 Overview
AI Insights — Kira automatically generates a class performance summary, pinpoints teaching pain points (e.g., “insufficient depth of evidence analysis”), and suggests specific follow-up teaching actions.
Real-time progress tracking — view each student's grade, score, and current status live through the Participants list.
Question matrix — columns for Q1, Q2, and so on show each student's score per question, helping you quickly spot common trouble spots.
4.2 Student settings: extended time
This feature makes it easy to give an individual student more time — before, during, or even after a session is published.
Access & timing — open this from the Settings button while a student's status is Not Started, In Progress, or Extended.
Percentage-based configuration — use the + or - buttons to increase a student's answering time by percentage (e.g., 50% or 100%).
Real-time duration calculation — Kira automatically calculates and displays the adjusted final time (e.g., 60 minutes → 90 minutes) so you can verify it instantly.
A few important rules govern how extended time works:
Rule | Details |
Targeted assignment | Applies only to the selected student — it doesn't affect anyone else's progress in the class. |
Status matrix constraint | Once a student's status is Completed, or the exam has Expired / Ended, the Settings button is disabled and time can no longer be extended. |
Confirmation mechanism | You must click [Confirm] for the new time settings to actually reach the student. |
This makes it simple to support IEP and 504 accommodations that require exam time extensions — you don't need to build a separate exam for one student. Everything happens within the same session, keeping the assessment fair and inclusive.
4.3 Deep interaction: from overview to detail
Results page navigation — click a student's avatar to go straight to their full assessment results page.
Question detail drawer — click a question's score cell (e.g., under Q1) to slide out a drawer showing that student's specific answer and score (e.g., 12/15 pts).
4.4 Grading management
Click [Grade] in the actions column to go to the full grading page for manual grading or review. Once grading is finished, the button updates to Graded — click it again anytime to review the scoring details and comments.
4.5 Session control & lifecycle management
Multi-session switching — click [View All Sessions] to quickly move between sessions for different classes or time periods.
Create new session — click [Create New Session] to assign the same assessment to a new class or group of students.
Expiration alerts — completed exams clearly show “Session Expired” along with the exact closing time (e.g., Feb 10, 2026, 17:00).
4.6 Instant diagnostics
With AI Insights, you get an in-depth read on class-wide knowledge gaps right at the proctoring screen — no need to wait for everyone to finish or compile statistics by hand. That means you can review with your class right after the assessment ends, keeping the Test → Evaluate → Review loop tight and efficient.
Part 5 — Data Analysis
Once results are in, Kira turns them into clear, actionable insight — no spreadsheet required.
5.1 Score distribution analysis
Histogram display — see how many students fall into each 10-point score range (0–10, 10–20, and so on).
Key statistical lines — the chart automatically marks the Average Score, Median Score, and Passing Score.
Dynamic interaction — click on any score range bar to instantly filter and see the list of students in that range.
5.2 Question error breakdown
Every question is automatically flagged with a risk level based on its error rate:
Risk level | Error rate | What it means |
High Risk | Above 40% | A class-wide blind spot. Consider re-teaching the concept. |
Medium Risk | 20% – 40% | Some students are confused. Consider targeted small-group tutoring. |
Low Risk | Below 20% | The class has generally mastered this material. |
The full list shows each question's error rate alongside exactly which students got it wrong. Click [View Details] to open a panel showing every student who chose an incorrect option, along with their specific answer.
Part 6 — Grader
The Grader is where grading gets done — click [Grade] next to any student on the Session Summary page to jump straight into it.
6.1 Multi-dimensional grading view
Left navigation — see the student list, overall grading progress (e.g., 102/102 questions graded), and each question's status (submitted / pending grading).
Central grading area — view the full question stem, the student's answer, and any auto-tagged missed or incorrect options.
6.2 AI writing & plagiarism detection
Writing detection — for Essay questions, Kira analyzes in real time whether the text appears AI-generated.
Plagiarism detection — a built-in detector helps you spot academic dishonesty.
6.3 AI one-click grading
Click [Grade All With AI] to have Kira provide preliminary scores and reasoning summaries based on your preset rubric. You're always in control — you can adjust any AI-suggested score and add your own personalized comments.
6.4 Structured feedback
Scoring panel — enter the final score (e.g., 12/15 pts) or adjust the AI-suggested score.
Three-in-one feedback — use the Evaluation, Feedback, and Rubric tabs together to give students multi-layered, specific improvement suggestions.
6.5 Smart editor validation
As you edit questions, Kira checks in real time for a missing question stem, a point value of 0, or a coding question without reference code — so nothing slips through before publishing.
6.6 Why teachers love the Grader
Eliminates tedious repetition — [Grade All With AI] handles the foundational logic for short-answer questions, cutting grading time by over 70% and letting you focus on students' reasoning instead of basic right-or-wrong checks.
Streamlined progress management — the sidebar tracks “Needs grading” counts in real time and lets you search for specific students, so nothing gets missed during a big grading push.
High-quality, personalized tutoring — AI-generated summaries capture each student's key gaps, and you can fine-tune that draft feedback into deep, specific guidance — turning assessment into a real tool for learning.
Have a question about Assessments that this guide didn't cover? Reach out to Kira Support, and we're happy to help.