How the Dashboard Works
What is the Study Dashboard?
The Study Dashboard is your personal command center on BiOGuide. It watches how you perform on timed practice papers, builds a knowledge profile from your results, and tells you exactly what to study next – ranked by what will help you the most.
It is completely free, works entirely in your browser, and only requires a BiOGuide account with at least one submitted timed attempt.
Let’s walk through it by following Bhavyaa, one of BiOGuide’s own team members, as she would have used the system to prepare for IBO.
Bhavyaa’s journey, step by step
1. She creates an account and sets her target
Bhavyaa signs up at the Account page, picks an avatar, and selects IBO from the Target Olympiad dropdown under Profile. This tells the recommendation engine to prioritize IBO syllabus topics when ranking her study suggestions. If she had skipped this, the system would default to IBO anyway (the broadest scope), but setting it explicitly means the engine knows for sure.
2. She takes her first timed attempt
Bhavyaa heads to BiOrchive, picks IBO 2022 Theoretical 1, and starts a timed attempt. She works through all 50 questions under exam conditions, submits, and clicks Submit to Leaderboard to save the result.
Her score lands at 142/258 (55%) (It won’t because she’s smart, if bhavyaa’s reading this, please dont be mad at me!). The report screen immediately shows per-subject accuracy bars – she can see that Enzyme Kinetics is at 25%, Membrane Transport at 38%, while Genetics and Ecology are both above 85%. (Again, it won’t tho)
Below the bars, the report gives her stateless recommendations based on this single attempt: “Focus on 5 subjects”, “Enzyme Kinetics stands out as your weakest spot”, “Keep doing what’s working – Genetics, Ecology are solid (85%+)”.
Even after just one attempt, the knowledge enrichment section adds a “View your study dashboard” link at the bottom. Her knowledge profile gets cached in her browser’s localStorage so it persists across tabs and sessions (it refreshes automatically after an hour or whenever she takes a new paper).
3. She visits the Dashboard
Bhavyaa clicks through to her Dashboard. Here is what she sees:
Summary stats at the top – 5 cards: 1 attempt, 55% average score, 3 strong subjects, 5 weak subjects, and 1 active day in the last 30. When she has 2+ attempts, a sparkline trend chart appears inside the average score card.
IBO Readiness bar – A progress bar showing how prepared she is for her target olympiad. It combines topic coverage (how many IBO-relevant topics she has been tested on) with her mastery scores on those topics to produce a single readiness percentage. At 18% after one attempt, she has a long way to go – but now she knows exactly where she stands.
Study Recommendations – 10 ranked cards, grouped into buckets:
- Priority Study: “Focus on Enzyme Kinetics” (25% accuracy, critical), “Focus on Membrane Transport” (38%, weak), and three more of her worst subjects. These are the topics where her score is lowest and where study time will have the biggest impact.
- Prerequisite Gaps: “Cover prerequisites first – before tackling Signal Transduction, strengthen Membrane Transport and Protein Structure.” The engine walked the prerequisite chain in the topic graph and found that Bhavyaa has not mastered the foundations yet. Instead of sending her straight to a topic she is not ready for, it redirects her to the building blocks.
- Expand Coverage: “Expand into Ethology – you have not been tested on this yet. It falls under 9. Ethology.” These are syllabus sections Bhavyaa has zero data on, so the engine nudges her to explore them.
- Revisit Soon: Empty for now. This bucket will activate later when older attempts start aging past 30 days.
Suggested Next Paper – The engine looks at all practice rounds available on BiOrchive, finds rounds Bhavyaa has not yet attempted, and scores them by how many of her weak subjects each round covers. It suggests the round with the best overlap so she gets maximum practice on her weakest areas.
Study Plan Link – Based on her overall mastery level, the dashboard suggests a study plan that matches her current stage. Low mastery points to the 6-month or 1-year plan; higher mastery suggests the 3-month or 1-month plan.
Subject Mastery – Colored bars for every subject she was tested on, grouped by syllabus section in collapsible groups. Enzyme Kinetics shows a red “Critical” badge at 25%. Genetics shows a green “Strong” badge at 87%. Each group header shows a topic count and can be collapsed or expanded by clicking. When she has 2+ data points on a subject, a mini sparkline chart appears next to the bar showing her accuracy trend over time.
Section Coverage – “1. Cell & Molecular Biology: 8/15 topics tested, avg mastery 52%”. She can click any section bar to expand it and see every individual topic in that section – tested topics show their mastery badge, untested topics show a grey “Untested” badge. Each topic name links directly to its study page.
Recent Attempts – Her submissions with score, question count, duration, and a score delta comparing each attempt to the one before it (e.g., “+13” in green if she improved 13 percentage points).
Study Activity – A 30-day dot grid showing which days she practiced. Empty days are light grey, days with one attempt are a muted purple, days with multiple attempts are a solid purple. Hovering any dot shows the date and attempt count.
Copy Summary – A button at the bottom that copies a formatted text summary of her dashboard stats (attempts, average, strongest/weakest subjects) to her clipboard. Useful for sharing progress with a study partner or tutor.
(Finally, Don’t be mad at me!)
4. She studies a topic page
Bhavyaa clicks on Enzyme Kinetics from the dashboard. On the topic page, she sees the usual metadata badges (Intermediate difficulty, Prerequisites: Protein Structure, Syllabus: IBO/USABO) plus a new small inline badge: “Critical 25%” in red, with a tooltip reading “Based on 12 statements across 1 attempt”. This comes from the cached profile – stored in localStorage, so it appears instantly even if she opens the page in a new tab without visiting the dashboard first.
She reads the topic, works through the examples, and feels more confident.
5. She drills weak areas in the Question Bank
Bhavyaa visits the Question Bank to practice targeted questions. Because she has a cached knowledge profile, a “Weak areas first” toggle button is now visible in the filter bar. She clicks it.
The entire table reorders: questions tagged with Enzyme Kinetics, Membrane Transport, and her other weak subjects float to the top. She combines this with the “IBO” olympiad filter and “Medium” difficulty to build a focused drill session on exactly the questions that will help her most.
6. Two weeks later, she takes a second attempt
Bhavyaa does IBO 2023 Theoretical 2. This time she scores 68% – a solid improvement. After submitting, her report shows the usual single-attempt recommendations, but now extra cards appear at the bottom:
- “Persistent weakness across attempts”: “Enzyme Kinetics (32%), Membrane Transport (45%) – weak across 2+ attempts. Targeted study before your next round should help.” These subjects were weak in her first attempt and are still weak now. The engine highlights them specifically because the pattern has persisted.
- “View your study dashboard”: “Your full knowledge profile is built from 2 attempts. See all your strengths, weaknesses, and personalized recommendations in one place.”
If Enzyme Kinetics had actually gotten worse (say 20% this time vs 25% last time), she would see a sharper warning: “Declining in 1 subject” – “Enzyme Kinetics (22%, 2 attempts) – this has been trending downward. Consider a different study approach or resource.”
7. The Dashboard updates
Back on the Dashboard, everything has recalculated. The mastery scores now use time-decay weighting: the two-week-old first attempt gets weight 0.8 while the fresh second attempt gets full weight 1.0. So her current performance counts more than the older result.
Trend arrows appear next to subjects: an upward arrow on topics she improved on (maybe Ecology went from 85% to 92%), stable arrows where nothing changed much, and a downward arrow if anything slipped. When there are 2+ data points on a subject, a mini sparkline chart appears showing the accuracy trajectory over time.
The subject groups are now collapsible – each section header shows a topic count and can be clicked to collapse or expand, keeping the page tidy as the profile grows.
Recent attempts now show richer detail: question count, duration, and a score delta. She can see “+13” next to her second attempt, confirming her improvement at a glance.
The section coverage bars are interactive too. Clicking “1. Cell & Molecular Biology” expands to show every topic in that section with individual mastery badges. Untested topics appear grey, making it easy to spot gaps in her coverage.
The IBO readiness bar has climbed from 18% to 32% as she covered more relevant topics. The next-paper suggestion updates to recommend a round she has not yet attempted that covers her remaining weak areas.
The study activity dot grid shows two active days out of the last 30 – one for each attempt. As she practices more regularly, the grid fills in and makes consistency (or lack of it) visible at a glance.
The recommendations reshuffle. Subjects she improved on drop in priority. Enzyme Kinetics, still critical after two attempts, stays at the top. Topics she has not touched in a while will start getting “Revisit Soon” cards once they age past 30 days.
Over time, as Bhavyaa takes more papers, the profile gets richer, the trends get more reliable, and the recommendations get sharper. The system learns what she knows and what she does not, and keeps pointing her toward the highest-impact study sessions.
How the scoring works
Time-decay weighting: Recent attempts count more than old ones. An attempt from yesterday gets full weight; one from 3 months ago gets half weight. This means your dashboard reflects where you are now, not where you were months ago.
| Age of attempt | Weight |
|---|---|
| Less than 7 days | 1.0 |
| 7 to 30 days | 0.8 |
| 30 to 90 days | 0.5 |
| Over 90 days | 0.3 |
Sample confidence: A subject tested with only 2 statements is not as reliable as one tested with 20. The engine scales down the mastery score for small samples until you have at least 12 statements (about 3 questions) worth of data.
Mastery levels are determined by the combination of weighted accuracy and sample confidence:
| Level | Score range |
|---|---|
| Untested | Too few statements to judge |
| Critical | Below 35% |
| Weak | 35% to 55% |
| Developing | 55% to 75% |
| Strong | 75% to 90% |
| Mastered | 90% and above |
Trend detection: The engine compares your most recent attempt’s accuracy on each subject against the average of all your earlier attempts. A difference of more than 10 percentage points triggers an “improving” or “declining” trend arrow.
How recommendations are ranked
Each topic in the syllabus gets a priority score from 0 to 1, calculated as:
| Factor | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Weakness signal | 40% | How badly you need this topic (critical = 1.0, mastered = 0.0) |
| Prerequisite readiness | 25% | Are the prerequisites covered? (all met = 1.0, blockers = 0.1) |
| Exam relevance | 15% | Does it match your target olympiad’s syllabus? |
| Coverage gap | 10% | Is this in a section you have barely touched? |
| Recency boost | 10% | Has it been a long time since you last practiced this? |
The engine then sorts all topics by priority, assigns them to the four recommendation buckets, and shows you the top 10.
Dashboard features at a glance
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Summary stats | Attempts, average score (with sparkline trend), strong/weak counts, active days |
| Readiness bar | Weighted coverage + mastery score for your target olympiad |
| Study recommendations | Ranked cards grouped into Priority Study, Prerequisite Gaps, Expand Coverage, Revisit Soon |
| Next paper suggestion | Recommends an un-attempted practice round that covers your weak areas |
| Study plan link | Points you to the study plan that matches your current level |
| Subject mastery | Collapsible section groups with colored bars, badges, trend arrows, and sparklines |
| Section coverage | Click-to-expand bars showing tested vs untested topics per syllabus section |
| Recent attempts | Last 5 attempts with score, question count, duration, and score delta |
| Study activity | 30-day dot grid showing practice consistency |
| Copy summary | One-click clipboard export of your stats for sharing |
Privacy and data
- All computation happens in your browser. Your attempt data is fetched from your BiOGuide account (stored in Supabase) and crunched locally – nothing is sent to any third-party analytics service.
- The knowledge profile is cached in your browser’s localStorage, keyed to your user ID. The cache persists across tabs and browser restarts, and is refreshed automatically whenever you visit the dashboard or submit a new attempt. It is cleared when you log out.
- Only you can see your dashboard. Other users cannot view your mastery data.
Limitations
The dashboard is a client-side tool, which means a few things work differently from a server-side system:
- One browser at a time. Your cached profile lives in the browser you’re using. If you take a paper on your phone and then open a topic page on your laptop, the laptop won’t know about the new attempt until you visit the dashboard there. The dashboard itself always fetches fresh data – only the small mastery badges on topic pages and the weak-areas-first toggle in the question bank rely on the local cache.
- Private browsing. In incognito or private mode, some browsers restrict localStorage. If that happens, mastery badges may not persist between pages. The dashboard page itself is unaffected – it fetches directly from your account every time.
- No real-time sync across tabs. If you have the dashboard open in one tab and submit a paper in another, the dashboard tab won’t update automatically. Refresh it to see the new data.
None of these affect your stored attempt data, which lives safely in your BiOGuide account regardless of browser state.