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Khan for Educators (US)
Course: Khan for Educators (US) > Unit 3
Lesson 1: Using course mastery on Khan AcademyCourse mastery
Course mastery is part of Khan for Educators, a free course for teachers to learn more about Khan Academy, the content and tools available for teachers and students, and best practices for implementing technology with students. Created by Meaghan Pattani.
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- When I first started integrating Khan Academy in my classroom, new students would be given a quick assessment with Math for example to determine where each student needs to start. Is this still used with students has this been discontinued?(10 votes)
- There's no general math diagnostic, but one method that works well is to have your students work through the Course Challenge for a specific course or the Unit Test for a specific unit. This will then give students credit for skills that they have already mastered, and it will also recommend videos and practice exercises for skills that they are struggling with.(3 votes)
- I've a new student, but don't know how to add the assignments to him. In the past new students prompted a pop-up that asked to add the assignments... this did not happen for this student.(1 vote)
- All active assignments (those that are not past due) are now automatically added for new students who join your classes. The old pop up prompt was removed, so now no action is required on the teacher's end.(1 vote)
- So how does a classroom teacher reconcile the concept of course mastery with the silly convention of quarterly standards-based grading systems?(1 vote)
- If your school is using a standards-based grading system, you should be able to use the Skills report to help you submit students' grades. To access this, go to the Activity Overview in your class and then click the Skills tab.
This will allow you to view each student's mastery progress by skill. Each skill is associated with a standard, so you can use this report to record students' mastery of standards.(1 vote)
- I want to assign different courses to different students in the same class...they get to choose which course to work on for enrichment. How can I make this happen?(1 vote)
- Hi Melissa,
Do you want to assign the entire course to them, or specific content from each course?
If you just want to assign an entire course to them (where they work on the content at their own pace and in their own order), then I suggest creating a Course Mastery Goal for them.
To do this, navigate to your class and go to Course Mastery --> Placement --> Create Goal. Make sure only that student's name is checked under the "Students" dropdown and select the appropriate course under the "Course" dropdown. If the course is not listed, you will need to click on "Edit courses" within the dropdown and add the desired course to your class.
You can find more information about mastery goals here: https://support.khanacademy.org/hc/en-us/articles/360030694212-How-do-I-set-and-view-Course-Mastery-Placements-Goals-(1 vote)
- Is there any way to reset a students' course mastery? I teach English across all levels of high school. I would like to run my previous year's students back through the Grammar course to demonstrate that they retained mastery. Is the best option to simply assign them the unit tests which will back them down a level for missed items?(1 vote)
- Hi Paul,
There's not a way to completely reset course mastery progress, other than creating a new account. If you would like to go this route, you can create your students' accounts for them via the Students tab in your KA class, which will allow them to use a second account without needing another email address.
Alternatively, you can assign the Unit Tests from each unit like you mentioned. After completing the test, their mastery progress will move down for skills that they answered incorrectly, and will simply remain the same for skills that they had previously Mastered and now got correct on the unit test.(1 vote)
- I haven't seen anywhere showing how to add questions. I teach accounting and would need to add assignments to compliment what I have seen during my quick review of the courses. My question being how can I add to what's already pre-caned as they say?(0 votes)
- Unfortunately there's not a way to add your own questions to the assignments---you can only assign the assignments that have been created by Khan Academy.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- Hi, I'm Meagan from Khan Academy. And in this video, we're gonna explore Khan
Academy's course mastery system. At Khan Academy we're
devoted to mastery learning, and build our content around
our course mastery system. However, a question we hear
frequently from teachers is, what exactly do we mean by
course mastery on Khan Academy? Course mastery on Khan Academy, is a feature that allows teachers to set and track long term
learning goals for students, while encouraging students
to work at their own pace. Currently course mastery is available for courses with full practice content. All of our math courses
including AP Calculus, AB, BC, AP Statistics and our Get Ready for grade level courses, as well as Grammar, High
School Biology, AP Biology, AP Physics 1, US government and civics, AP US government and politics,
US History, AP US history, World History Project
Origins, AP macroeconomics, Microeconomics, AP Microeconomics, and AP Computer Science Principles. Assigning course mastery goals, allows teachers to set
and track long term goals. Let's walk through how to assign course mastery
goals to your students. When you log in to Khan Academy, you'll land on the teacher dashboard. Click on the name of the class, you want to assign a mastery goal. On the left hand side navigation, go to the course mastery placement tab, if you haven't done so already, at the on grade level
course you currently teach. And if you're a math teacher, add to get ready for grade level course. If you're about to start the school year, we recommend assigning the get
ready for grade level course, as a course mastery goal, to have students begin the year, by gap filling and
strengthening fundamentals, before diving into on grade level skills. For example, if I were
a 5th grade teacher, I would start the year by signing the get ready
for fifth grade course. Click the blue button, add these courses. Now you'll be on the course
mastery placement page. Click assign goal, you can confirm your assign
the desired goals to students, by selecting course mastery placement on the left-hand panel, and you will now see the
current mastery goals, assigned to students in your class. A students work on Khan Academy. You can also add additional courses, for students to work on, either
below or above grade level. You can assign the same course
for all students to master, or you can assign different courses to individuals or groups of students. We recommend using Khan
Academy's skill report, to look more closely at students progress, and determine the best goal,
or goals for each student. Now let's look a little closer at what students see in terms
of course mastery goals. When students log in to Khan Academy, they will view on their learner home page, each student will be able
to see their teacher, or class name on the left hand side. By clicking on the class, students will see their mastery goal. A student can click the goal at any time, and continue from where they left off, to make progress towards their goal. Students can continue working
toward their mastery goal, on the iOS and Android apps as well. Every skill or concept has
multiple mastery levels, and students earn additional
points, with each new level. There are several ways
for students to practice, they can practice a single
concept at a time on an exercise, or they can practice a
mix of different concepts, on a quiz, unit test, course
challenge or mastery challenge. As students get questions right, they move up from not started,
to familiar, to proficient, the top level is mastered. Students can only get to mastered, by getting to proficient, and then getting that concept
right, on a unit test, course challenge, or mastery challenge. Most teachers recommend, having students start
with the course challenge, or specific unit tests within the course. This way both students and teachers, can quickly identify gaps and strengths in student knowledge, in order to provide the right content, and right support in the right moment. When students are stuck
or missed questions, their mastery level moves down, and a symbol appears next to the concept, to help them remember where to focus. If students are consistently
missing problems about a concept, they'll
move to attempted status, and a red dot will appear
next to that concept. Mastery of individual concepts, contributes to unit progress, and to overall course progress. A mastery goal is considered achieved, once a student reaches 90% mastery, though they can still access
previous goals, at any time. Students can always see
what they've completed, and what they should work on next. Additionally, once students
have begun working in a course, they will receive mastery challenges, which appear at the
top of the course page. Mastery challenges,
highlight opportunities for students to engage in personalized spaced
repetition of the skills, students have already started practicing. Research shows that
spiraling skills over time, and across lessons, is a key component to minimizing
student learning loss, and improving knowledge retention. We'll be diving deeper into
reports, in a later lesson. But let's take a quick look, at where to find mastery
progress, for students. Starting at the teacher
dashboard, select a class, select course mastery progress,
from the left-hand panel. This report shows student
progress on the selected course. First you'll see class progress, towards overall course mastery, and the median mastery
for the class as a whole. Below, you'll see the
mastery for each unit, perhaps it's the start of the year, and you're focusing on this first unit. By clicking on any unit, you can see the additional
detail of progress, for each student at the unit level, including each student's mastery progress, for that unit, and the class median, for unit mastery progress. Khan Academy also has a skills report, found under the activity overview, to dive deeper into the individual skills for a given course. On the skills report,
you can open any unit, to get a quick view of how
students are progressing, for the skills in that unit, by looking at the purple
bars on the right side. By clicking on a specific skill, you will be able to see the mastery level, for every student for that skill. If you notice that several students are
struggling on a skill, you can assign extra
practice on that skill, right here in the skills report. We'll talk more about
how to make assignments, in a separate video. Some advice from teachers using Khan Academy's course
mastery in their classrooms. Mastering an entire course,
can feel daunting to students, so break it up into
checkpoints, like monthly goals. You can also consider
having students focus, on particular units throughout the year. Then check the unit report,
to see how they're doing. Also you don't need to assign the same course mastery
goal, to every student. To differentiate, you can
assign different courses to different students. Some teachers even assign a mastery goal for a previous grade level, as review at the start of the year. We hope this video helps you get started, using course mastery with your students.