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Edit a live assessment

You can keep editing an assessment after it goes live — add, edit, reorder, or remove items without pulling it offline. This article explains exactly what happens to candidates who already submitted, who is mid-attempt, and who starts after your change.

Why submitted results never change

A candidate's results are computed from that attempt's stored per-response scores: the automatic score recorded when they answered, and the rubric scores your evaluators entered. Editing the assessment's structure never rewrites those stored scores, so adding, editing, reordering, or removing items does not change a candidate who already submitted.

Items you add after a candidate submitted are simply skipped in that candidate's rollup — a missing response is never treated as a zero, so new questions cannot silently drag earlier candidates down. The builder shows a notice on live assessments confirming this guarantee while you edit.

What weight and points changes do affect

There is one honest exception to "nothing changes": aggregation settings. Role-fit is a weighted rollup computed from stored scores using the current section weights, skill-mapping weights, and item points. Raw scores stay frozen, but if you change a section's scoring weight or an item's points on a live assessment, the role-fit percentages are recalculated with the new weighting — for every candidate, including those who already submitted.

This is by design: everyone is always measured by the same current rules, so candidates stay comparable. But it means weight changes mid-cohort will shift the leaderboard you have already been looking at. On blueprint-linked assessments, recorded decisions also keep a role-fit snapshot from the moment each decision was made, so your decision record stays defensible.

  • Item content, order, and new items: no effect on submitted candidates.
  • Section weights, skill weights, item points: role-fit is re-aggregated for everyone.
  • Answer-key edits apply to future submissions only; earlier responses keep their recorded score.
  • On blueprint-linked assessments, recorded decisions keep a role-fit snapshot from decision time.

Candidates who are mid-attempt or yet to start

Candidates who start after your edit take the updated assessment. A candidate who is mid-attempt continues on the version they loaded; if they resume or reload, they receive the updated structure, and every answer they already saved stays attached to its item.

For edits that change what is being measured — swapping out a task, changing an answer key, re-weighting sections — think about comparability before editing mid-cohort: candidates before and after the change will have answered slightly different assessments. For a substantive redesign, the cleaner path is to duplicate the assessment into a new draft and run the next cohort on the new version.

When editing is locked

Once an assessment is closed or archived, its structure locks and its results are final — the builder tells you so and offers duplication instead. Duplicate it to a new draft to make changes; the duplicate carries the structure, weights, and rubric snapshots over.

Editing also requires structure-edit permission in your workspace. If you can see the builder but not change it, a notice explains that your role does not include structural edits.

At a glance

  • Draft and live assessments are both editable; closed and archived assessments are locked.
  • Candidates who already submitted keep their exact results — scores come from what they answered.
  • Items added after a candidate submitted are skipped in that candidate's rollup, never counted as zero.
  • Changing scoring weights or an item's points re-weights role-fit for everyone, including past candidates.
  • Candidates who start or resume after your edit see the updated version.

Frequently asked questions

I fixed a wrong answer key on a live assessment. Are earlier candidates rescored?
No. Automatic scores are recorded at submission time, so earlier responses keep the score they received under the old key, and later submissions are scored with the corrected key. If the error affected earlier candidates, review those responses manually — evaluator scores override automatic scores.
If I delete an item, do candidates who answered it lose points?
Their stored response is preserved, but a removed item no longer participates in the rollup, so role-fit is recomputed without it for everyone. Deleting is safe for mistakes caught early; mid-cohort, prefer leaving the item in place.
Why could I not edit live assessments before?
Earlier versions of SkillCort locked all structural edits at publish. The lock is now scoped to what actually protects results — closed and archived assessments — because submitted results are computed from stored per-response scores and cannot be changed by structural edits.

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