How to use Course Mastery on Khan Academy - 2019

- Hi teachers, this is Sal Khan here from Khan Academy, and welcome to course mastery. So back in 1984, famous education researcher Benjamin Bloom published the famous two sigma study where he showed that a student who works in a mastery learning framework with a tutor one on one can operate two standard deviations better. So the student who was operating in the 50th percentile can operate well into the 90th percentile, 95th, 96th percentile. You fast forward to today, there have been over 200 studies that have backed up his claims. On top of that, you as an educator know that your students enter your class at all different levels. You also know that differentiation has always been considered a best practice in education. The hard part, however, is how do you do that with 25, 30, 35 kids in the classroom? All of us at Khan Academy, we firmly believe that if we had to pick between an amazing teacher and an amazing technology, we'd pick you every time, the amazing teacher. Luckily we don't have to make that tradeoff, and so we're thinking about how can we empower you, an amazing teacher, with as powerful technology as possible? And that's what course mastery is. It's a way for you to set mastery goals for your students, and these goals are fairly large goals so they'd be appropriate for over a term, or over a school year, and you set it once, and then you can feel confident that over the rest of the year, or the rest of the term your students have things to work on that are appropriate for them. They'll be able to learn at their own time and pace, master concepts at their own time and pace, consistent with Benjamin Bloom's work, and remediate their gaps as necessary. And multiple studies have shown that when students on Khan Academy are able to engage in mastery learning, learn at their own time and pace for even 30 minutes or more per week, so say 45 minutes a week, or one class period a week, they're able to accelerate their learning as measure by standardized benchmark exams by 20 or 30%. So we're really excited about course mastery, it's really the heart of what Khan Academy offers, and now I'll hand off to my colleague who can explain more about how course mastery can be used in your classroom. - Hi, I'm Patty from Khan Academy. I'm gonna show you how to use Khan Academy for self paced practice so students can master skills at the course level that's just right for them. The course mastery feature allows you to set and track a long term learning goal for students. Currently, course mastery is available for over 20 courses, including these. When you log in to Khan Academy, you'll be on your teacher dashboard, click into the name of the class. On the left hand side navigation bar, click on course mastery to see the drop down menu, then click on set goals. If you haven't already, add the course you currently teach, as well as any courses where students may need extra practice. You can also add more advanced courses for students to work ahead on. You can assign the same course for all students to master, or you can assign different courses to individuals or groups of students. Then select a due date. Remember, mastery of an entire course can take students months to achieve. When students log into Khan Academy, they will be on their learner home. Each student will be able to see their teacher, or class name on the left hand side. By clicking on their class, students will see their mastery goal. A student can click in at any time and continue making progress toward their goal. They can continue working toward their mastery goal on the iOS and Android apps as well. Every skill or concept has multiple levels, and students can 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, or a course 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 or course challenge. When students are stuck or miss 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. Students can always see what they've completed, and what they should work on next. We're back on the teacher dashboard in a class. The progress tab tells you where students are at as they work to master a specific course. First, you'll see each student's progress towards overall course mastery and the median mastery for your class as a whole. Below, you'll see the mastery for each individual 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 additional details including the mastery level for each individual concept. Notice that several students are struggling on a skill, you can assign extra practice on those skills from here in the progress tab. We'll talk more about how to make assignments in a separate video. 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. 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 assign a mastery goal for a previous grade level as review at the start of the year. For more information, go to KhanAcademy.org/resources.