Core features

Events & boss battles

Events are time-limited challenges that can boost XP earnings during regular practice sessions. Boss battles are the most intense form — a school-wide or class-wide event with a shared target that the whole group chips away at together. Teacher-hosted live sessions are not included in event XP bonuses.

What events are

An event is a named, time-limited challenge that layers an XP bonus on top of every practice session for as long as it runs. Events are created by school admins — typically a Head of Department or above — and can target a single class, a whole year group, or the entire school.

While an event is active, a themed banner appears on the student dashboard and on the practice screen. The banner shows the event name, the bonus XP amount per correct card, and a live countdown to when the event ends. Students do not need to opt in — the bonus applies automatically to every session they complete during the event window.

What counts as "during an event"? A session earns the bonus if it is completed while the event is active — that is, the session ends before the event's end time. Sessions that straddle the boundary (started before the event ends but finished after) do not carry the bonus XP for cards answered after the cutoff.

Any number of events can be scheduled in advance, and multiple events can run simultaneously if a school chooses to stack them — though this is unusual. When more than one event is active, banners for each are shown on the dashboard in chronological order of end time (soonest expiry first).

Boss battles

A boss battle is the most dramatic event type. Instead of running for a fixed calendar window, it ends when the group collectively reaches a shared card target — the total number of correct answers the whole class or school must contribute together.

Every correct card answer during a boss battle contributes one toward the target. The dashboard shows a progress bar counting toward the target total. As students across the class (or school) complete sessions, the shared count rises in real time. When the target is reached, the boss is defeated, the event ends immediately, and all participants who contributed earn the event medal. Boss battles also automatically pay double XP — 20 XP per correct card instead of the usual 10.

Why boss battles work

The shared-target mechanic creates a form of collective accountability that purely individual challenges cannot. When students can see a class HP bar ticking down, a quiet student completing their session after dinner contributes the same damage as a top-ranked student doing it in form time. There is no way to free-ride — each person only deals damage through their own correct answers — but the result is felt by everyone.

Teachers who have run boss battles before mocks report that the HP bar becomes a focal point of classroom conversation without prompting from the teacher: students update each other on the progress, ask how many cards are needed to finish the boss off, and sometimes organise informal revision sessions to push HP down before the deadline.

Card target calibration

The admin sets the card target when creating the event. A well-calibrated target should require most of the class to do at least two or three sessions — achievable by a committed class in a week, but not beatable by a single student in one sitting. As a rough guide:

Class of 25, 3-day boss: Aim for 700–900 correct cards (roughly 28–36 per student across the window, or 2–3 sessions each at 75% accuracy on a 15-card session).
Class of 25, 7-day boss: Aim for 1,500–2,000 correct cards — enough that daily sessions matter but the target is still reachable by a well-engaged class.
Whole-school, exam week: Scale up by class count. A 200-student school with 7 days could set a target of 12,000–16,000 cards — visible progress at scale on the school leaderboard.

Tip: set the target slightly below what a fully engaged class would achieve — a boss defeated with two days to spare still generates more energy than one that limps past the deadline half-beaten.

XP bonus mechanic

The XP formula during an event is straightforward:

Boss battle: 20 XP per correct card (double the standard 10)

Standard event: 10 XP per correct card (base rate only)

The XP boost for boss battles is automatic — it is not a field teachers configure. Boss battles always pay double XP; standard (non-boss) events run at the base rate of 10 XP per card. The boost is flat and additive — a boss-battle card earns 20 XP regardless of how many sessions the student has done.

The boost applies to regular practice sessions only — Standard sessions, Speed Rounds, Marathons, Drill weak cards, and Topic drills. Teacher-hosted live sessions are not included in the event XP bonus.

XP earned during events counts toward all the same places as regular XP: subject rank threshold, subject leaderboard position, and (for individual accounts) league tier. A boss battle can meaningfully accelerate rank progression for students who engage during the window.

Example in context: a student completing a 15-card standard session at 75% accuracy (≈ 11 correct) during a boss battle earns 11 × 20 = 220 XP from that session versus the usual 110 XP outside an event.

How events are created

Events can be created at three scopes:

Class events: Created by any teacher from their Class page. Visible only to students in that class.
School events: Created by Heads of Department or platform admins from the School page. Visible to all students and classes at that school.
Platform events: Created by Educator admins. Can be scoped to all school users (scope=global) or to all individual accounts (scope=individual) — these are distinct audiences that do not overlap. School students never see individual-scoped events and vice versa.

The creation form collects:

Name: The event title shown on the dashboard banner and in the event management view. Keep it short and motivating — "Pre-mock push", "Boss: The Great Challenge", "Half-term sprint".
Start time: Date and time the event begins. The bonus starts applying from this exact moment. You can schedule events in advance — the banner will not appear on student dashboards until the start time is reached.
End time: Date and time the event ends (or, for boss battles, the fallback deadline if the boss is not defeated before then). Sessions completed after this point revert to standard 10 XP per card.
Card target (boss battles only): The total number of correct answers the class or school must reach together to defeat the boss. See the calibration guidance in the Boss battles section above. Boss battles automatically pay double XP (20 per correct card) — no separate XP field is needed.

Once saved, the event becomes visible in the event management view (Class page for class events, School page for school events) where it can be edited or deleted before it starts. After the start time, the end time can still be adjusted (for example, to extend a boss battle that is proving more popular than expected).

Creating a class event: from your Class page, scroll to the events section and click Create a class event. Set the name, badge emoji, dates, topic scope, and (for boss battles) the card target. Boss battles automatically pay double XP — no extra configuration needed. School-wide events are created by your Head of Department from the School page.

Cosmetic rewards — event medals

Participating in an event may award an event medal — a cosmetic badge that appears permanently on the student's profile. Medal eligibility works differently by event type. For collective (boss battle) events, the medal is awarded to every student in the class the moment the class's combined correct-answer total crosses the card target — all participants earn the medal together, not just top contributors. For solo events, a student earns the medal when their own correct-answer count crosses the target individually. There is no ceremony at event end; completion is tracked in real time as answers come in.

Medals are permanent. They do not disappear when the event ends, and they cannot be earned again after the event closes. A student who misses an event will not be able to obtain that event's medal later — which gives events a genuine exclusivity that makes participation feel meaningful to students who care about their profile.

Medals are visible on the student's profile page in the cosmetics section, displayed in chronological order with the most recently earned first. Hovering or tapping a medal shows the event name and the date it was earned.

Why medals matter motivationally

For students who care about their profile appearance, the medal collection acts as a tangible record of participation history. A student with five event medals can see — and show — that they have been consistently engaged across multiple terms. This is a secondary motivational layer on top of XP and rank: even students who are not in contention for top leaderboard positions have a reason to participate, because the medal will be theirs regardless of how many cards they answered relative to classmates.

Tip: when announcing an event in class, mention the medal — especially for students who are less competitive but respond well to collecting. "Everyone who takes part earns the badge, not just the top players" is a framing that tends to bring in students who would otherwise opt out of anything that feels like a ranking exercise.

Viewing current events

Students do not need to navigate to a separate events page. Active events surface in two places automatically:

Dashboard banner.A themed strip appears at or near the top of the student dashboard showing the event name, the XP rate, a live collective progress bar toward the card target (for boss battles), and a countdown to the event's end time. The countdown updates in real time without a page refresh.
Practice screen card result. After each correct card during an event, the XP earned is shown as the boosted value — for example "You earned 20 XP!" during a boss battle rather than the usual "10 XP". This keeps the event bonus visible throughout the session rather than only at the dashboard.
Session summary. The end-of-session summary screen shows total XP earned for that session. During an event, the breakdown includes the base XP and the event bonus separately, so students can see exactly how much the event contributed.

For boss battles, the collective progress bar on the dashboard updates as other students in the class or school complete sessions — students can watch the shared count rise in response to collective effort across the school day without needing to refresh the page.

No action required. Students never have to "join" an event or activate a bonus. If you are in the scope of the event (your class or school) and you complete a session during the window, the bonus is applied automatically. There is nothing to configure and no risk of missing out through a missed sign-up step.

Tips for teachers

Events are most effective when they are intentionally timed and announced. The XP bonus alone will not generate engagement if students do not know an event is running — the dashboard banner helps, but a quick mention in class makes a significant difference.

Run a boss battle in the week before a test

Pre-assessment revision is the single highest-leverage moment for an event. Students who would otherwise do one reluctant session are motivated to do several when a boss HP bar is visible and classmates are watching the same counter. A 3–5 day boss battle starting the Monday before a Friday test tends to produce noticeably higher session counts than any other intervention.

Align events with half-term revision periods

Half-term is when study habits collapse most reliably. A 5–7 day event spanning the break gives students a reason to open the app when there is no school structure reinforcing it. Keep the HP modest for a half-term boss — students have more competing demands than a school week — and consider a higher XP bonus (×2 or ×3) to reward the sessions that do happen.

Announce events in class for best take-up

The dashboard banner is reliable but passive. A 30-second announcement — "We've got a boss battle running this week, every correct card does damage, go check the HP bar on your dashboard" — consistently doubles or triples first-day participation versus the banner alone. If you can show the HP bar on a classroom screen, even better.

Use events to recognise collective effort publicly

When a boss is defeated, acknowledge it in the next lesson. "We hit zero on Thursday night — the class did over 800 correct answers in three days" is a moment of genuine collective pride that costs nothing to deliver and reinforces the habit you are trying to build. Students remember the sessions where the class pulled together, not the sessions where they answered ten cards quietly at home.

Avoid event fatigue

Events are most motivating when they are special. Running a boss battle every week reduces the novelty rapidly — within a month, students treat the event banner as wallpaper. A cadence of one or two events per half-term, timed around genuine milestones (an upcoming assessment, a topic completion, a holiday break), keeps the feature feeling like an occasion rather than routine.

Quick reference: teachers create class events from their Class page; HoDs create school-wide events from the School page. You need: an event name, dates, topic scope, and (for boss battles) a card target. Boss battles automatically pay double XP — no configuration needed.

Practice — all six practice modes, card types, the adaptive picker, XP, and streaks
Leaderboards & leagues — class, school, global, and league leaderboards; how XP earned during events affects standings
Profile & cosmetics — where event medals appear, rank progression, and unlockable cosmetics