Insights & Review
How IB Marker turns your practice history into personal coaching, and tells you which topics to review next.
Estimated Reading Time
About 7-9 minutes. If you're new to the Insights page or the review queue, read the whole thing; otherwise skim the categories table and the tips at the end.
What are insights?
An insight is a short coaching note written for you, based on patterns in your recent practice answers. IB Marker analyses the last 14 days of your marked submissions: the feedback you received, which command terms tripped you up, how well your arguments chained together, and how your answers scored on four writing-quality dimensions (Clarity, Coherence, Precision, Effectiveness). When something meaningful stands out, it writes an insight.
Insights are designed to be actionable: each one comes with a "Why this matters," a couple of concrete observations, and a specific thing to try in your next answer. Not more theory; one thing to change.
Where they appear
Your 5 most recent unviewed insights appear in the notification panel (bell icon) on your dashboard. The full history, trend charts, and review queue live on the Insights page accessible from the sidebar.
The insight categories
Every insight is tagged with one of the categories below. Knowing what each one means makes it easier to spot patterns across sessions.
Command term mastery
You're consistently stronger or weaker on a specific command term (Evaluate, Analyse, Explain, Derive, etc.). The insight tells you what the marker expects from that verb.
Reasoning development
Your chain of reasoning ("because X, therefore Y, which means Z") is breaking down partway through. Usually a symptom of stopping at the first point instead of developing it.
Terminology precision
Key subject terms that should appear in your answers are missing more often than chance. The insight tells you which terms to swap in.
Structure balance
One part of your answer is always under-developed (often the conclusion, or the evaluation half of a two-part answer).
Quality focus
Your weakest quality dimension (Clarity, Coherence, Precision, or Effectiveness) is called out with a specific thing to practice.
Improvement pattern
The same feedback is showing up across many answers. The insight surfaces the theme so you can fix it once, not thirty times.
Cross-subject transfer
Your answer quality is strong in one subject but weak in another (same skill, different subject). The insight tells you which habit to carry across. See below.
Pacing
You consistently take much longer or much shorter than the marks would suggest for a question. The insight flags whether that's leaving you under-pressured or rushing through detail.
Recurring misconception
The same factual error is showing up across multiple answers in a subject. The insight names the misconception and gives the corrected version.
Mastery trajectory
Tracks whether a subtopic you've practised before is climbing, plateauing, or slipping back. Useful for catching topics you "thought you'd mastered" before exam season.
Synthesis coaching
A single "big picture" note tying the others together. Always at least one per generation.
Exam answers count too.
The insight engine reads both your practice answers and your exam simulation answers. During exam season the data volume the coaching draws on roughly doubles.
Cross-subject transfer coaching
This is worth its own section because it's the newest type of insight and the easiest to get value from.
Answer craft (the way you write an answer) is not subject-specific. A clear topic sentence is clear whether it's about photosynthesis or elastic demand. The same goes for using transitions, deploying precise terminology, and keeping your reasoning coherent.
IB Marker tracks those four quality dimensions (Clarity, Coherence, Precision, Effectiveness) per subject. If you're averaging 8/10 on Coherence in Biology but only 5/10 in History, the system notices and writes you a transfer coaching insight: "You already have the structure muscle. In your next History essay, try writing your opening sentences the way you'd write a Biology topic sentence."
When you'll see these
Transfer insights only appear if you have at least 5 marked answers in each of at least two subjects, and the quality gap between them is meaningful (at least 2 points on a 10-point scale). Practice across subjects to unlock them.
The review queue
Alongside the coaching insights, IB Marker runs a spaced-repetition scheduler per topic. Every time you answer a practice question, the system records how well you did on that subtopic and schedules when you should review it next. Shorter intervals when you got it wrong, longer intervals when you got it right: the classic proven approach for long-term retention.
When a topic's review date rolls around, it shows up in two places:
- An amber "Due for review" chip row on the top of Practice Mode step 1, next to the green "Recommended for you" row.
- The Review queue section on your Insights page, grouped by subject.
One click on any chip starts a 5-question practice session drawn from that subtopic's active question pool. When you finish, the system updates the topic's next review date based on how you scored; the cycle continues.
How "got it right" is decided
The system uses your marks-earned as a percentage of total marks. The grade scale is tuned for IB-style partial credit: 70% already counts as a strong answer (because on IB marking, that's grade-7 territory). You don't need flashcard-style perfection to graduate a topic.
The Insights page
Open Insights from your sidebar for the full dashboard. It's split into a top KPI tile row plus a stack of visualisations and lists:
KPI tiles
Four quick-glance tiles at the top of the page:
- Average score — rolling 30-day mean across all marked answers.
- Total marked — how many answers have been AI-marked in the window.
- Confidence hit-rate — how often the confidence rating you set before submitting matched the actual mark you earned. High hit-rate means your self-assessment is calibrated.
- Current streak — consecutive days with at least one marked answer.
Visualisations
84-day activity heatmap
GitHub-style grid showing every day of the last 12 weeks. Darker squares = more answers that day. Quickly reveals practice consistency and the dreaded "exam-week-only" pattern.
Score distribution
Histogram of your individual answer scores. Wide spread = inconsistent; tight peak = consistent at a level (good or bad). Useful for spotting whether you're improving the floor or the ceiling.
Dimension trends
Line chart showing your four writing-quality dimensions (Clarity, Coherence, Precision, Effectiveness) over the last 30, 60, or 90 days. If one dimension flatlines while others rise, that's your next focus area.
Subject radar
One radar loop per subject across the four dimensions. Visually shows where you're stronger in one subject than another — the same data that drives transfer-coaching insights.
Chain-of-reasoning donut
Donut chart of how often your answers complete the full reasoning chain ("because X, therefore Y, which means Z") versus stopping at the first or second step. A direct read on the "reasoning development" insight category.
Command term × subject heatmap
Matrix of average score per command term, per subject. The dark cells are where you're strongest; the pale cells are exactly the (term, subject) pairs to drill next.
Lists and history
Subject breakdown table
Sortable table with one row per subject: answers marked, average score, trend arrow, last activity date. The hidden gem for diagnosing which subject's been quietly neglected.
Transfer coaching cards
Up to 3 cross-subject transfer insights rendered as cards. Each names both subjects, the shared skill, and a concrete move to try in your next answer.
Review queue
All topics currently due for review, grouped by subject. One-click launch for a 5-question session on any topic.
Insight history
Every insight you've ever been given, paginated and searchable. Use this when you want to look back at how a specific habit was diagnosed and what advice went with it.
Getting the most out of insights
One insight at a time
Don't try to act on every insight at once. Pick the one that looks hardest (usually a synthesis or transfer insight) and apply its advice on your next 3-5 answers. Then reassess.
- Practice across subjects. Cross-subject transfer coaching is the most personalised type of insight the system can generate, and it only works if you have data in multiple subjects. Even 5 answers in a second subject is enough to unlock it.
- Don't ignore the review queue. It's easy to keep practising new topics and neglect old ones. Clearing your review queue daily, even 5 questions at a time, is the most efficient use of your practice time for retention.
- Read the "Why this matters" expanders. The summary on each insight card is the headline. The "Why this matters" section explains how markers think about this dimension; that's the bit that changes how you write, not just what you fix.
- Check the dimension trends weekly, not daily. Day-to-day noise swamps real signal. Come back on Sunday and look at whether the lines are trending up.