§ 01What it is
Arena is the competitive corner of the workspace — timed challenges organised into arenas by category (Critical Thinking, Aptitude, STEM Math, STEM Science, Quick Tests) — with a deliberate twist: the score that matters most is your previous score. Four tabs: Growth (home), Play, Board, and Duels.
Students open it from the Student Portal's app grid. It greets you the family way: “Akwaaba, [name].”
§ 02The Growth screen
- Streaks — your current run of days played and your longest ever.
- Beat your best — one card per arena showing your attempt count, your personal best score and accuracy. Untouched arenas don't shame you with zeros: “Not started — give it a go and set your first best.”
- Recent activity — your latest attempts with scores and when you played.
§ 03Playing a challenge
- Open Play (“Pick an arena”) and tap an arena, then a challenge inside it.
- The timer starts — big and central, shifting colour as time runs down (calm → amber → red in the final seconds).
- Questions come one at a time (“Question 3 of 10”). Tap an answer, then Next; on the last question the button becomes Submit.
- If the clock hits zero first: answers you've already selected are submitted automatically — partial credit beats no credit. If you hadn't answered anything yet, nothing is recorded against you; you just see a kind “time's up” and can retry.
Fair by design
Answers are graded on the server — the correct answers never travel to the device, so there's nothing to peek at.
§ 04Results
The result screen frames everything as growth:
- The headline is one of: “New personal best!” 🌟, “First try logged — nice start”, or — when the run was rough — “Every try teaches your brain something.”
- Your score and accuracy, with your previous best and current streak for context.
- A question recap — ✓ and ✗ per question, framed as “revisit these”, never “mistakes”.
- Play again for another run, or back to the arenas.
§ 05The leaderboard
The Board tab is the within-school leaderboard — there when you want it, invisible when you don't:
- Filter by arena and period (This week, All-time).
- Your own standing shows in its own card above the table, highlighted in the rankings with a “You” tag.
- Names are privacy-shaped — first name and an initial — and the board only ever covers your own school.
- Empty board? “No scores yet — be the first!”
§ 06Duels
From the Duels tab a child can challenge friends to beat their run on a challenge they just played — a friendly head-to-head, never a public ranking:
- After a run, send the invite to up to five classmates at once; each duel snapshots the run-to-beat (score, time and which try it was).
- Invitees play the same challenge and the result resolves as won, lost, or tied from each player's perspective.
- Invites expire after 7 days, and your Growth screen keeps a tally of duels won, lost and tied.
§ 07Eligibility & internet
- Basic 4 and up. Younger classes see a friendly “Challenges are coming to your level soon!” rather than a locked door.
- A connection to start and to score. Arena needs the internet to start a new challenge and to grade it — scoring and timing are server-side, so the correct answers never reach the device. A challenge you've already opened keeps working if the connection drops, and your personal bests are safe on the server.
- Like every app, Arena must be enabled for the student — see App access. School admins can also toggle a student's leaderboard visibility from their user page.