Smart Sharing is QuizMagic’s complete classroom assessment system: distribute a quiz with a single link, monitor students in real time, prevent cheating, auto-grade objective questions, AI-grade essays (Premium), and export full reports — all without students needing an account.
1. What Is Smart Sharing?
Smart Sharing turns any saved quiz into a live, monitored assessment session. Unlike Simple Sharing (a public, anonymous link), Smart Sharing gives you:
- A named session with its own settings and analytics
- Student identification (name + optional email/student ID)
- Real-time monitoring of who is currently taking the quiz
- Auto-grading for MCQ, True/False, Fill-in-the-Blank, and Short Answer
- AI Essay Grading with custom rubrics (Premium tokens)
- Anti-cheating monitoring (tab-switch, copy/paste, devtools, etc.)
- Per-student exports (PDF, DOCX) and bulk CSV summaries
- Granular grade release controls
Simple Sharing vs. Smart Sharing
| Simple Sharing | Smart Sharing | |
|---|---|---|
| Available to | Free + Premium | Premium (Free: 1 session) |
| Student account | Not required | Not required |
| Student identity | Fully anonymous | Name + optional email/ID |
| Attempt tracking | None | Per-student, with duplicate prevention |
| Real-time monitoring | ❌ | ✅ (30-second heartbeat) |
| Anti-cheating | ❌ | ✅ |
| AI Essay Grading | ❌ | ✅ |
| Score overrides | ❌ | ✅ |
| Exports | ❌ | PDF / DOCX / CSV |
| Grade release control | N/A | Session-wide + per-attempt |
2. Creating a Smart Sharing Session
You can create a session in two ways:
Fast Track — right after generating
After QuizMagic generates a quiz, click Save & Share → Smart Share. This saves the quiz and opens the session-creation dialog in one step.
Classic — from Saved Quizzes
- Open the Dashboard → Saved Quizzes.
- Find your quiz and click Share → Smart Share.
- Configure session settings (see Section 3) and click Create Session.
Free tier limit: 1 Smart Sharing session total. Premium: unlimited concurrent sessions.
3. Session Configuration Options
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Session Name | Internal label (e.g. “Grade 8 Biology — Chapter 4 Quiz”) | Required |
| Time Limit | Minutes from when a student starts. Auto-submits when reached. | None |
| Max Attempts | Per-student cap (per name + email + browser fingerprint) | 1 |
| Expiration Date | Session stops accepting new attempts after this date/time | None |
| Allow Review | Lets students view their answers after submission | OFF |
| Randomize Question Order | Shuffles MCQ questions only (mixed-safe — see below) | OFF |
| Randomize Answer Options | Shuffles answer choices within each MCQ | OFF |
| Anti-Cheating | Enables tab/devtools/copy-paste monitoring | OFF |
| Scoring Configuration | Custom point values, type defaults, “show points to students” | Equal weight |
| Essay Criteria Weights | Per-criterion weights for AI grading (essay only) | Default rubric |
Notes on key settings
- Allow Review is OFF by default to protect quiz integrity. When enabled:
- Non-essay quizzes: students see correct answers + their answers + teacher comments.
- Essay quizzes: students see only their submitted answers + teacher comments (the answer key is never revealed for essays).
- Randomize Question Order is mixed-safe: only MCQ-type questions shuffle. Essay, short-answer, and fill-in-the-blank items stay in place to preserve narrative flow. The toggle is hidden if your quiz has no shuffleable items.
- Anti-Cheating is Premium-only — see Section 10.
4. Sharing the Link
Each session offers three distribution channels in the Share dialog:
- Copy Link — for chat, email, LMS posts.
- QR Code — generated on the fly. Click Download PNG to save it with a custom filename for printed handouts, slides, or posters.
- Direct sharing buttons — quick copy formats for common platforms.
Students just open the link, enter their name (and email/ID if you’ve enabled it), and start. No sign-up required.
5. Real-Time Monitoring
The Smart Sharing dashboard shows a live activity panel for each session:
- Currently taking the quiz — students who pinged the server within the last 5 minutes.
- 30-second heartbeat — each active student silently pings
quiz_progressevery 30 seconds while the quiz is open. - Started at / Last active — exact timestamps so you can spot who dropped offline mid-attempt.
- Submitted attempts — appear in real time as students finish.
This means if a student loses internet, you’ll see their last-active time and can use Reset Attempts to let them retry.
6. Managing Sessions
From the session card, you can:
- Pause / Resume — Paused sessions show “Session not active” to new students. Students already in progress can still finish and submit.
- Reset Attempts — Clears the duplicate-prevention block (name + email + browser fingerprint). Use this when a student needs to retake.
- Edit Session Settings — Change time limit, anti-cheating, max attempts, expiration, etc.
- Edit Quiz Content — Fix question text, answers, or add/remove items without creating a new session. Existing attempts retain their original snapshot.
- Delete Session — Permanently removes the session and all attempts.
Duplicate-attempt prevention
Behind the scenes, validate_quiz_attempt blocks repeat submissions using a combination of:
- Session ID
- Student name
- Student email (if collected)
- Browser fingerprint (canvas + WebGL + hardware signature)
This prevents the common “incognito-mode bypass” trick. Reset Attempts is the only way to legitimately allow a retake.
7. Viewing Results & Analytics
Click any session to open Results, which has two views:
Per-Student View
For each attempt: score, percentage, time taken, violation badges (if any), and a full review of every answer. Open Review Answers to see the same dialog students see, plus analytics, score overrides, and teacher-comment fields.
Per-Question Analytics
For each question across all attempts:
- Success Rate — % of students who got it right
- Average Time — seconds spent on the question
- Average Visits — how often students returned to revisit it
- Difficulty — auto-categorized
Summary insights
The dashboard also surfaces:
- Need Review — questions with <50% success rate
- High Performance — questions with >80% success rate
- Struggle Points — questions averaging >45 seconds
- Possible Guesses — questions answered in <3 seconds
Score Overrides
Click any question in a student’s attempt to manually adjust the score. Overrides are saved per-question and reflected in:
- The student’s score and percentage
- The CSV export
- The student-facing review (when grades are released)
8. AI Essay Grading in Smart Sharing
If your quiz contains essay questions, Smart Sharing unlocks the EssayGradingPanel.
How it works
- Set per-criterion weights in the EssayCriteriaEditor (e.g. Content 40%, Structure 30%, Grammar 30%).
- When students submit essays, click Grade with AI to bulk-grade.
- 1 essay token = up to 50 essay submissions in a single session.
- Premium accounts receive 5 essay tokens per month, plus any tokens you’ve purchased.
What you get back
- A score per criterion + total
- A short AI-generated comment per essay
- The ability to override the AI score and add your own teacher comment
You stay in control: AI grades are suggestions you can edit before releasing.
Token balance. Monthly tokens expire at the start of the next billing cycle; purchased tokens never expire. The system uses monthly tokens first.
9. Grade Release Workflow
Smart Sharing uses a two-level grade release system:
Session-wide toggle
A switch in each session card title: Release All Grades. When OFF, every student in the session sees “Pending review” instead of their score.
Per-attempt toggle
For finer control, you can release individual attempts. This is ideal for essay quizzes where you want to release grades only after AI grading + your manual review for each student.
Student experience while pending: Students see a “Your submission is being reviewed by your teacher” message instead of their score and answers, regardless of the Allow Review setting.
10. Anti-Cheating (Premium)
When enabled, the system monitors for the following events during a student’s attempt:
| Event | Detection |
|---|---|
| Tab switch | visibilitychange event |
| Window blur | Desktop only — suppressed on mobile to avoid false positives from notifications, keyboards, etc. |
| Copy / Paste / Cut | Keyboard + clipboard events |
| Right-click | contextmenu event |
| Fullscreen exit | fullscreenchange event |
| Developer tools open | Heuristic detection |
Warning-then-submit flow
The system does not auto-submit on the first violation. Instead:
- First violations trigger an
AntiCheatWarningoverlay reminding the student to stay focused. - Once the configurable threshold is reached, a
ViolationDialognotifies the student that their attempt is being submitted automatically. - The attempt is saved with violation badges visible to you in the Results view.
Mobile note
Window-blur is intentionally ignored on screens narrower than 768px. Mobile OSes routinely fire blur events for notification banners, keyboard popups, and incoming calls — counting these as cheating would create constant false positives.
11. Exports
From the Results view, you can export in three formats:
- Per-Student PDF / DOCX — A printable answer sheet for one student, including their name, score, every question, their answer, the correct answer (for non-essay), score overrides, and teacher comments.
- Bulk CSV Summary — One row per attempt: student name, email, score, percentage, time taken, violations, submission time. Perfect for gradebook import.
- Combined Answer Sheets PDF — All students’ answer sheets in one document, ideal for archival or sharing with admins.
12. Tips, Best Practices & FAQs
Best practices
- Always include a Time Limit for high-stakes assessments — it caps both how long a student can spend and how long anti-cheating monitoring runs.
- Turn on Randomize if students might sit next to each other.
- Pre-set scoring config for weighted exams before sharing the link.
- Test with yourself first — open the share link in incognito to confirm everything looks right.
- For essay quizzes, draft your rubric weights up front and ensure you have enough essay tokens for your class size.
FAQs
Do students need a QuizMagic account?
No. They enter only their name (and email/ID if you’ve enabled it). No sign-up.
What if a student’s internet drops mid-quiz?
Answers are not autosaved during the attempt. However, your dashboard will show their last-active time. Use Reset Attempts to let them restart.
Can I edit the quiz after sharing the link?
Yes — both the quiz content and the session settings can be edited at any time, no need to regenerate the link.
Is there a limit on how many students can take the quiz?
No. Smart Sharing scales to as many concurrent students as you need.
Can students bypass the attempt limit using incognito mode?
No. We use browser fingerprinting in addition to name + email to detect duplicates.
Can I let one student retake the quiz?
Yes — click Reset Attempts for that student.
Will students see their grades automatically?
Only if you’ve turned on Release Grades (session-wide or per-attempt). Until then, they see “Pending review.”
What happens to in-progress students if I pause the session?
They can still finish and submit. New students are blocked from starting.
Does anti-cheating work on mobile?
Yes, with one exception: window-blur is suppressed on mobile to avoid false positives. All other detections (tab-switch, copy-paste, etc.) work normally.
How long does the AI take to grade essays?
Usually under a minute for a class of 30, depending on essay length.
Ready to Run a Real Class?
Smart Sharing — plus anti-cheating, AI Essay Grading, and unlimited sessions — is included with every Premium plan.