How does Sparx calculate the times shown in my Sparx site?

There are a few different times reported in the homework summary view of your Sparx site:

• Total homework time
• Total homework video time
• Total question time
• Attempt times
• Total Independent Learning time

We’ll run through what each time means

Attempt time

Any time a student submits an answer to a question in their homework, whether it is correct or incorrect, this constitutes a single attempt. We measure the time taken for each attempt, and report these times on the Hand in Page. 

Students can make multiple attempts at the same questions, and the time for each attempt can be seen by clicking on a given question.

We start timing each question attempt from the first time the student opens the question in Sparx Maths or, if it’s not their first attempt at the question, from the time that they reopen the question. When the student submits an answer the total time spent on that question attempt is recorded. 

Time spent watching help videos counts towards the attempt times displayed. However, aborted attempts, where students do exit a question without submitting an answer, are not shown on the Hand-In page but still count towards their total homework time. (See below)

Please note that when students spend a very long time on a single attempt, or watching a single video, we assume that they have become distracted and are no longer working in a focused manner. We reduce the time displayed on the Hand-In page for these very long attempts.

Total question time

The total question time is simply the sum of all the attempt times for that question. For example, if a student spent 3 mins on their first attempt, which was incorrect, and then 1 min on their second attempt the total question time would show as 4 mins. Total question time may be rounded to the nearest minute.

Total homework time 

This is the total of all attempt times for all questions in the homework. This may not always match up exactly with the sum of the total question times displayed because we also include time spent on ‘aborted attempts’ (mentioned above) when calculating the total homework time.

Total video time

This is the total time spent watching videos in this homework. When students spend a very long time watching individual videos the value displayed may be reduced to represent ‘focused’ video watching time.

Total independent learning time

This is the total independent learning time recorded for this student over the past week. Attempt times are recorded in the same way in independent learning as in homework.