Tuesday Tech Tip: Exploring Mastery in COLE 3.0/Schoology

This month, our posts have been focused on how we can align, design, and refine what we do with students with an eye on mastery.  We've looked at how we can use learning objectives and standards in Schoology, what kinds of assignment options we have, and in what ways we can more effectively use digital feedback.  This week, we'll explore how mastery or competency reports can help inform both students and teachers in COLE 3.0/Schoology.

Teacher: Mastery Overview by Class

Once we have aligned student work to standards or learning objectives, Schoology can track student progress on those standards, based on the teacher's digital assessment of the work.  (Remember, student work doesn't have to be completed or submitted in a digital format, but the teacher does need to put scores in Schoology to track progress digitally.)  As the teacher, you can see class-wide, student-specific, and/or standard-specific information.

Teacher: Mastery Overview by Objective

Teacher: Mastery Settings

As the teacher, you can change the settings for the way the mastery reports are configured for you, including what minimum score meets the expectation, how many times students must achieve that score for mastery, and whether it's based on an average or the highest score. (These are based on grading scales you have in Schoology, so if you want to use a 1 - 5 scale, you would need to set those up in the Gradebook set-up prior to changing the mastery settings.)

Schoology will track how many assignments are tied to the standards or objectives and how your class or individual students do over time by assignment.  For students, they can see their own progress, but cannot see class overview information.  (As of now, parents do not see the mastery option.)  The student view of his/her mastery in Schoology is the same thing that teachers see when looking at an individual student's "Objectives Report."

Student: Mastery Report

Ultimately, using mastery reports for goal setting and feedback (for both students & teachers) should be taking us into deeper conversations about what mastery means, whether we're choosing the best ways for students to demonstrate that mastery, and what we do when students are not reaching those goals.  Schoology is one tool that we can now utilize to guide those conversations.