You scored 3 out of 3 on the module 06 mini quiz. In one question the CPL had dropped while the managers complained about poor-quality leads, and you picked the right option: look at lead qualification and payments in the CRM, campaign by campaign. A week later the owner of an IELTS prep centre sends you the table from his test and asks which ad to switch off. There are no three options to choose from this time, and the answer has to be worked out.
The quiz showed that you can recognise the right idea among three wordings. Whether you can apply it to real numbers is checked separately.
From a quiz to a practical skill check
Module quiz
An option is selected
Explanation
Why the answer is correct
A new task
A changed condition
A result someone can check
What in Academia helps you check yourself
| What | Where | What it checks | Where the result lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Module mini quiz | At the end of the last lesson in each of the 20 modules, with a "mini quiz" link in the catalogue | Three questions on the module's main ideas | In this browser |
| Foundations quiz | The marketing foundations quiz | 12 situations: market, value, economics, acquisition, retention | In this browser |
| Written self-checks | Lessons 18.02-18.09, for example finding where analytics diverges, and the final CMO case | Whether you can take a situation apart and justify a decision | With you: the site never sees your answer |
| Training lab | The training lab | Six tasks on events, GTM and purchases, each solution checked against several data sets | Drafts in this browser |
| Start track | The Start track | 27 steps over six weeks, each with a task, a result and a "done when" line | Ticks in this browser |
| Lesson checklists | The tick-box items in a lesson's text | Which steps of the lesson you have done | In this browser, separately for the Russian and the English page |
You tick the Start track and the checklists yourself. The site doesn't check whether the work is done: the tick is there so you can see where you stopped.
How a quiz works
Every question has three options, and they are shuffled on each new attempt, so memorising where the right answer sits is pointless. Pick an option and press Check answer. After that the answer is locked, and a review of all three options appears under the question: why the right one is right and what is wrong with the others, with links to the lessons worth going back to. In the foundations quiz two questions ask you to tick every correct option, and a partial answer gets no credit there. There is no time limit.
At the end you see your first-attempt score, for example 2 of 3. The button for retrying mistakes brings back only the questions you got wrong, and the first-attempt score doesn't change. Retaking the whole quiz replaces the saved answers and score for that quiz, so the site asks you to confirm first.
The quizzes exist only in Russian. On the English page of a lesson, a link to the Russian page takes the quiz's place.
What is stored and where
Academia has no accounts. Quiz answers, Start track and checklist ticks, and training lab drafts sit in the browser's local storage (localStorage) on your device. The site doesn't send quiz answers or ticks anywhere.
The site sets no expiry: everything stays until you clear the site's data in your browser settings. The browser may also wipe that storage on its own. Safari, for example, deletes it for a site if you have used Safari for seven days without clicking or tapping anything on that site (the WebKit rule). If you are doing the track in Safari and take a break, your ticks may disappear. Keep the results of each step in your "profile" note; a tick on the site is only a bookmark. Progress doesn't move to another browser or your phone. If the browser won't allow saving, a warning appears under the quiz and your answers last only until you reload the page or leave it.
When a quiz is updated, its version goes up, and an attempt saved under the old version isn't picked up: the quiz starts again. The Start track and the training lab exercises work the same way.
The training lab runs your code right in the browser, in an isolated sandbox: the code has no access to the network, cookies or the site's real dataLayer. Only service events go to the site's analytics: you started an exercise, ran the code, got a check result, opened a hint, completed the exercise, exported the project. Each one carries the exercise's ID and version, its type and the page address. A check result also carries the outcome, the attempt number and how long the check took; a completed exercise carries the attempt number and whether you solved it on your own or with the reference. The reference is recorded only once the exercise is completed. Your code and the exercise data don't go there. You can export a solution as a JSON file and import it on another device. It is a training lab project, not a GTM container.
A score shows answers, not a skill
3 out of 3 on a mini quiz means one thing: you answered those three questions correctly. A module holds far more situations than three, and the quiz awards no qualification. A practical skill is tested with a separate task: a calculation on new numbers, a setup in the training lab or on your own test site.
After any quiz, do three things. Read the review of every option, even when you were right: the reviews of the wrong ones show where the rule stops applying. If you guessed and can't explain the answer, count the question as unanswered. Solve a new example where the conditions differ from the question. And compare your result with the lesson the quiz links to.
Worked example on the centre's numbers
The centre's table comes from the lesson on the Meta test; the centre and the numbers are illustrative.
| Ad | Spend | Leads | CPL | Came to the trial lesson |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Problem | 4,900 ₸ | 7 | 700 ₸ | 1 |
| Result and price | 3,300 ₸ | 3 | 1,100 ₸ | 2 |
| What a lesson is like | 1,660 ₸ | 1 | 1,660 ₸ | 0 |
The owner asks: "The first one is cheaper, shall we switch off the second?" The mini quiz question tells you to look past CPL. The cost of a person at the trial lesson is 4,900 / 1 = 4,900 ₸ for "Problem" and 3,300 / 2 = 1,650 ₸ for "Result and price". Counted by who came, the second ad is almost three times cheaper. The third has one lead and nobody who came, so it tells you nothing.
Now change one condition. Suppose three people had come from "Problem": 4,900 / 3 = 1,633 ₸, almost the same as the second ad. Two people turned the conclusion around. So the answer to the owner is that these numbers leave the choice open, switching off any of the three now would be premature, and the second test should be judged by the people who came to the lesson. If you reached the same answer and can explain why a bolder statement would overreach, you have carried the principle over. Check your wording against the conclusion under the table in that same lesson.
Practice without a live project
You can practise events without a client's site and without an ad budget. The training lab needs no GTM account. Do exercise 2: a tag on generate_lead that fires only when form_id = contact_simple and passes form_id and value from the dataLayer and currency from a constant. Once the check passes, note down the event name, its parameters and the trigger conditions, and attach a screenshot of the check. Someone else can look at that result and repeat it, which a description from memory of what should have happened doesn't allow.
The training lab's check runs your solution against several data sets, including ones where the event must not fire. If you opened the reference, the exercise counts as passed "with reference", and that label stays in the exercise list.
Why there is no certificate
Academia doesn't issue certificates: not for the quizzes, not for the Start track, not for the training lab. If you need a document for a CV or a job ad, vendors issue them. For Google it is Skillshop: access to the platform and most certifications are free, and the Google Ads certification needs a score of at least 80% and stays valid for a year. A certificate shows that you know the vendor's product. Case studies show that you can do the work.
Exercise: one module from quiz to task
Take a module you have read, for example module 10 on web analytics.
The module 10 mini quiz has a question: the purchase tag fired in GTM Preview, is that enough? The right answer is no: you still need to look at the request, the parameters, whether the event arrived and whether there are duplicates. Change the condition: the purchase tag fired twice for one order. The answer stays the same, but now you know which of the four checks failed and can show it with a GTM Preview screenshot where the tag fired twice. The module already has a practical task in the lesson on GA4: the lead event in DebugView and a form with an error that doesn't send it. If you have done it and explained every quiz answer in your own words, the topic is yours. If the quiz came out 3 of 3 but the task didn't work, trust the task.