Study.com - What does 'Optional' mean on quizzes?

[Mab81]

Hi all, I have never used Study.com before and I am trying it out. I notice that AFTER I take some of the quizzes, the text turns from 'take quiz' to 'Optional'. The others will turn to 'Completed'.

If some quizzes are optional, why can't I tell BEFORE I take them?

[allvia]

When it moves to 'optional' status it mean you have covered the material and you do not need to take it - basically it counts as a 100% score on that quiz

[Mab81]

Thanks, I just meant that I never see it say optional until AFTER i have actually taken that particular quiz

[Supermind]

When it moves to 'optional' status it mean you have covered the material and you do not need to take it - basically it counts as a 100% score on that quiz

Actually, it is not always so. I noticed some lessons are already marked as optional, and you are awarded 5/5 points for them. But when I looked at the contents, they were very new. Of course, I had covered the basic points. But these ‘optional’ lessons were elaborating further details. I wrote to SDC asking if these optional lessons would not feature in the final test, bcos we often choose to overlook them. Haven’t heard back yet.

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Thanks, I just meant that I never see it say optional until AFTER i have actually taken that particular quiz

When you are about to begin a new chapter, you will actually see a percentage score, which tells you how much has been covered in that chapter. This could mean one of two things: certain lessons are repeating from a different chapter or from a different course that you have recently completed. If you scrolled thro the list, they will all appear as ‘optional’. The other possibility is that some chapters are somehow deemed ‘optional’ even if you haven’t covered them previously. I don’t Understand what that means- if it is deemed not necessary for the final test, and if it is only for you to improve your understanding if you chose to.

[jsh1138]

optional means you either tested out of it on the evaluation for that course or that you've covered it in other courses

that material will still be on the final so you have the option of running through it again. depending on when you cleared it you might have forgotten some of it or never known it to start with.

[Mab81]

All the replies are assuming i am seeing 'optional' BEFORE i take the quiz. but it's the opposite, it only appears AFTER i take that specific quiz. So i think i must take it.. i do.. then voila, after it's done, it says 'optional'. confusing, right? :o

[Merlin]

From what I've gathered from the ~20 courses I took at Study.com, optional means that the lesson can be made optional (quiz automatically marked complete) in one of the following ways:

1. Successfully completed the quiz for the same lesson in another SDC course
   
2. Successfully completed the quiz for a different lesson covering the same topic in the same SDC course (though this doesn't always apply)
   
3. Successfully answered a question related to the same topic as the lesson in a placement exam/quiz
   

If you haven't done one of those three things, the lessons will not show as "optional" until the quiz is completed. However, if you have done one or more of those things, you will often find that they are marked complete automatically (the quiz, therefore, made optional).

This threw me off a few times when I was going through all the lessons in a chapter where I had none complete initially; after taking the first few quizzes I noticed that like 2-3 more were complete that I hadn't reached yet. I got used to them auto-completing after taking a placement but until that time I hadn't noticed them auto-complete from taking lessons in the same course/chapter before.