Mastery Learning

With Mastery learning, schools can move away from the traditional alpha numeric grading and instead better communicate to students what skills and abilities they need to master. This system provides a better way to track a student's learning goals and progression.

Through this feature, schools can add or import their own standards and competencies for use in Gradebooks, rubrics, assignments, and more. Academic group managers at schools that have Mastery (formerly Competency Based Education) installed can get started on this feature by going to Academics, Grades, Grading setup, then Mastery settings.

Under the General settings, Academic Group Managers can create and modify global settings for this feature.

  • Mastery use determines which school levels can use mastery evaluations for grading. Administrators have the ability to set the evaluation methods for each individual school level. as well as enable or disable transferable and content-area skills for a school level. For example, you have the option to disable transferable skills and only use content-area skills for evaluation in the upper school, while doing the opposite in the lower school.

  • Learning progression access can be used to set the specific roles that have access to view a student's learning progression for each individual school level.

    Note: The Teacher role will always have access to learning progressions. There is no option to remove access for faculty.

  • Ratings & label display can be used to set how ratings and labels display for each role. By default, Ratings & label display is set to display both Ratings and labels.

    Note: The Teacher role will always be able to see ratings and labels. There is no option to prevent these from displaying for faculty.

    Once you're satisfied, select Save to confirm your changes or Cancel to remove them and go back.

Tip: Ratings & label display selections should be established first so that students and parents can see their evaluations once they're available.

These are skills that span a student's entire academic experience at a school. They're not tied to a specific course or subject area and instead home in on things like collaboration, research, and more. Transferable skills can be further categorized and broken down into Sub-skills as well. While these are fully customizable by the school, a typical category could include academic skills or habit-related skills.

Some examples of a sub-skill could include a more detailed topic related to whatever the main skill is. So, for a skill such as Collaboration, a sub-skill may include something like Group work.

Under the General settings, schools can completely customize their transferable skill labels and whether skill categories and sub-skills are available for use.

Use Transferable skills to set the name/label that is used throughout the system. You can keep the "Transferable skills" label or update it to better fit your school's framework and lingo.

You can also enable sub-skills from Transferable sub-skills, as well as create the name to be used inside of the system.

Ratings & computation method determines the default calculation method to be used. For your school's mastery ratings, set a numeric value and a label to be used for evaluation and reporting. Academic group managers can also select which rating a student needs to reach in order to achieve mastery level. Select + Add rating to create as many ratings as needed.

Computation method is where you can determine the default calculation process to be used for transferable skills. There are two parts to set up for transferable skills. The first part is to select the level the school would like to track these skills at. Your options include:

  • Track transferable skills at cumulative level only

  • Track transferable skills at course level only

  • Track transferable skills at the cumulative and course level

Once you've determined the level these skills should be tracked at, you'll need to set the computation method for each level. Your options include:

  • Decaying average - Each new evaluation receives a greater weight, with previous averages counting for less.

  • Most Recent evidence - Assigns a mastery level equal to the latest evaluation of a skill. It ignores any evaluations before the latest.

  • Weighted average - Averages all evaluations of a skill while factoring each evaluation with an assigned weight.

    Note: Weight is added when a faculty member selects skills to evaluate their assignment. Weight can be added to each selected skill.

  • Only 'N' times before mastery - The user needs to complete the skill a certain number of times before mastery is earned.

You can also enable N times before mastery which set the number of times that the student needs to demonstrate the skill before the mastery level is achieved.

Transferable skill categories can be used to distinguish between different transferable skills.

Select + Add category to create a new one and use the context menu to delete categories that are no longer needed.

Unlike transferable skills, content-area skills are directly tied to courses or class subjects. These are typically used to detail expected learning outcomes. Again, categories and sub-skills can be created to further refine these standards.

An example of content-area skills could include how well a student writes narratives to develop real or imagined experiences of events in an English or Language Arts class. The category would be Academic while a sub-skill could include how well the student uses something like dialogue and descriptions to further develop those events and experiences.

Similar to the transferable skills settings, schools can completely customize their content-area skill labels and determine whether categories and sub-skills are available for use.

Use Content-area skills to set the name/label that will be used throughout the system. You can keep the "Content-area skill" label or update it to better fit your school's framework and lingo.

You can also enable sub-skills from Content-area sub-skills as well as create the name to be used inside of the system.

Ratings & computation method determines the default calculation method to be used. For your school's mastery ratings, set a numeric value and a label to be used for evaluation and reporting. Academic group managers can also select which rating a student needs to reach in order to achieve mastery level. Select + Add rating to create as many ratings as needed for each school level.

Computation method is where you can determine the default calculation process to be used for content-area skills. Your options include:

  • Decaying average - Each new evaluation receives a greater weight, with previous averages counting for less.

  • Most Recent evidence - Assigns a mastery level equal to the latest evaluation of a skill. It ignores any evaluations before the latest.

  • Weighted average - Averages all evaluations of a skill while factoring each evaluation with an assigned weight.

    Note: Weight is added when a facultyselects skills to evaluate their assignment. Weight can be added to each selected skill.

  • Only 'N' times before mastery - The user needs to complete the skill a certain number of times before mastery is earned.

You can also enable N times before mastery which set the number of times that the student needs to demonstrate the skill before the mastery level is achieved.

If you would like to allow your faculty to select their own computation method, select Teachers may select their own computation method. Faculty will be able to select their computation method from their Gradebook settings.

Content-area skill categories can be used to distinguish between different types of content area skills.

Select + Add category to create a new one and use the context menu to delete ones that are no longer needed. You can also associate specific departments as needed.

Once your settings are established and your transferable and content-area skill labels have been customized to what your school needs, it's time to use the skill lists to start creating the actual skills that students are evaluated on.

If you remember from above, transferable skills span a student's entire academic experience at a school. They're not specifically tied to a course or subject area. Instead, they're used to focus on things like collaboration, research, and more. This is where schools can create the skills needed to evaluate students.

To get started, select Transferable skills from Grading setup. Select +Add to create a new transferable skill. Transferable skill name is the only required field here as it is what will display for faculty. The other optional fields include:

  • Code - Schools have the option to enter a code to help make it easier to search for the skill outside of using the name.

  • Category - This dropdown is populated with any Categories previously created under the General settings section.

  • Description - This is text to explain what this skill is intended for.

There's also an option to Save and add a sub-skill from here as well, though one can always be added after the fact if needed.

Once saved, the skill is added to the skills list, which acts like any other list in the product suite. You have access to filters, sorting options, and a search field to find specific skills within the list. There's also a Show inactive toggle, which can hide or make inactive skills visible in the list.

To add new transferable sub-skills, expand the skill and select + Add transferable sub-skill. Enter the sub-skill name, code, and a short description. All added sub-skills are then shown in the list under that specific transferable skill.

Remember that content-area skills are directly tied to courses or class subjects. These are typically used to detail expected learning outcomes. Create new skills by going to Academics, Grades, Grading setup, and then Content-area skills.

Selecting +Add opens a new modal for creating a new content area skill. Once you add the name, you can select how you want to associate the skill. Associate the skill with specific courses or certain grade levels and departments. With either option, you can select your options from a list. You also have a search bar, a select all, and a clear all on this modal to help find the options you want. The other optional fields include:

  • Code - Schools have the option to enter a code to help make it easier to search for the skill outside of using the name.

  • Category - This dropdown is populated with any Categories previously created under the General settings section.

  • Description - This is text to explain what this skill is intended for.

After being saved, the skill gets added to the list area, which acts like any other list in the product suite. You have access to a filter, a sorting option for things like alphabetical, and even search to find a specific skill within the list. There's also an inactive toggle which can hide or make inactive skills visible again on this list.

Once the administrator or manager has finished setting up Mastery learning materials, faculty can then start working with them. From the Assignment Center, filters and columns specific to Mastery can be used like Grading style.

The process for creating a new assignment is largely the same as it is for total score grading. From the Assignment Center, select +Add then Assignment to create a new assignment. Enter in the details as you normally would, but under Evaluation, you now have the Mastery option.

Once Mastery is selected, the Skills to evaluate option appears. Any previously created content-area and transferable sub-skills can be added by individually enabling them and then Select.

Tip: Any new sub-skills need to be created back under Grading setup.

When Mastery is enabled, faculty evaluate student assignments using the assigned skills from the Assignment detail page. From class assignments, select the work to be graded to be taken to the Assignment details. Next, select the student from the list to see the assigned Skills to evaluate plus the rating you can set and the option to include a comment if you want.

Once the ratings and comments have been added and committed, students and parents then have access to view them.

Faculty can grade Mastery assignments and/or related skills directly from their Gradebook. This means faculty can edit all grades for their students in one central place! In the Gradebook, the Mastery assignment will appear first followed by all related skills. When a faculty selects a grade box for a skill, a small pop up will appear with the associated rating. They can simply select a rating from the available list and the grade box will be populated with that rating.

If total score and mastery is the selected evaluation method, faculty can also add a total score to the Mastery assignment. If total score is not used, the Mastery assignment column acts as a placeholder in the Gradebook. However, faculty can still bulk add comments and mark the assignment late, incomplete, etc. Faculty can also bulk comment and bulk evaluate related skills.

From a student's profile, users can view the student's Learning progression. From here, users will see two tiles, one looks at transferable skills while the other looks at content-area skills. These tiles can both be filtered by school year, course, category, and sub-skill.

Once these filters have been set, users can select a sub-skill to view the progress the student has made towards mastering that sub-skill. When a sub-skill is selected, a fly-out will appear with any assignments that have been evaluated and count toward mastering the selected sub-skill along with assignment details, evaluation, and any comments.

Gradebook managers will always have access to all Student learning progressions. The following roles also have access to Learning progressions:

  • Students will have access to their own learning progression as long as their Viewer ID and Student ID match.

  • Parents can view their own child's learning progression.

  • Faculty will have access to learning progressions for students in their courses for the current year.

  • Advisors will have access to learning progressions for their advisees in their Advisory groups for the current year.

  • Dorm supervisors will have access to learning progressions for students in their dorm for the current year.

  • Coaches will have access to learning progressions for their student athletes on their team for the current year.

Admins can extract their Mastery data under Mastery Settings by selecting Generate mastery report. This will generate a .csv file which will include all Mastery ratings for all students across all courses and assignments.