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Course: Khan for Educators (US) > Unit 2
Lesson 1: Using assignments to support mastery learningCreating assignments on Khan Academy
Learn how to create and manage assignments on Khan Academy.
Khan Academy's assignments can be a valuable tool in your teaching toolkit. They allow you to align content with your lessons, facilitate learning new skills at grade level, and encourage students to tackle more complex concepts. Using these assignments in combination with course and unit mastery goals is a good practice, as this approach can enhance your students' learning progress. Essentially, assignments and mastery goals work together to create a comprehensive and effective learning journey for your students.
Mastery Goals as your main instrument for guiding student learning, while Assignments are supplementary tools to be used as necessary. Mastery Goals set the long-term learning objectives, while Assignments can be used strategically to address specific needs or reinforce certain concepts when required.
Consider the following example: A teacher has aligned Khan Academy exercises with the lesson content from their core curriculum. Students benefit from immediate feedback and built-in support by utilizing Khan Academy for independent practice. This enhances their learning experience and reduces the time you spend on grading.
Why use assignments?
- Rigorous content: Our content is designed to keep students as close to their learning edge as possible with a balance of procedural, application, and conceptual question types.
- Instant feedback: Your students get instant feedback on every question, and you can keep track of their progress using the Scores and Manage tabs.
- Differentiate content: You can select videos, articles, single-skill practice, and mixed-skills practice to assign to an entire class or specific students based on their readiness level.
- Access anywhere: Your students can access their assignments on their smartphones, computer, or tablet, and our content is available in over 50 languages.
Use the Assign tab to create an assignment
- From your teacher dashboard: select the class you want to create an assignment.
- Click the Assign tab under Assignments and select the content you want the student(s) to work on using the checkboxes.
Assignments can be made for specific students, for an entire class, or for multiple class periods all at once. You can assign different questions for each student or the same questions when assigning practice exercises. Consider using different questions for each student when you want to evaluate what students can do independently. This is often a good strategy at the middle or end of a unit. Using the same questions for each student is helpful at the beginning of a unit when you want to encourage collaboration, group work, or work through the question set with your students.
Please be mindful of how many assignments are in each unit when assigning whole units. We suggest no more than three assignments at a time to avoid overwhelming students.
Use the Scores tab to track student progress on assignments
- Navigate to your class page and click on the "Scores" tab under Assignments
- Here, you'll see a list of all the assignments you've given to your class.
- From here, you can view individual student scores and whether a student has started, completed, or not started the assignment. - You can also see their score if the assignment has been completed.
- You can sort this list by due date.
- Notice that videos and articles receive a green check mark when the student has completed the assignment.
- To be marked complete, a student must watch at least 90% of the video at no greater than double speed.
Remember, the Scores tab is a powerful tool to help you understand how your students are performing and where they might need extra help.
Use the Manage tab to edit assignments
- Navigate to your class page and click on the "Manage" tab.
- Here, you'll see a list of all the assignments you've created for your class.
- Find the assignment you want to edit and click on it.
- You can change the assignment details, such as the due date, the students assigned, and more.
- You can delete the assignment by selecting the checkbox to the right of the assignment and then selecting the red Delete button near the top of the page.
Remember, the Manage tab is a great tool to help you organize and manage your class assignments effectively.
Key things to know about assignments
- Students will see assignments listed in order by the due date.
- You can create assignments and save them for later or schedule assignments to go live for your classes on a specific date in the future.
- When new students join your class, they will automatically receive all assigned assignments but not yet due to the whole class.
- Students can engage in assignments in other languages (including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Turkish, and more) by changing the default language in their settings.
Want to join the conversation?
How do I delete an assigned assignment?(5 votes)
To delete an assignment:
1. Go to the Assignments --> Manage tab in your class
2. Click the checkbox next to the assignments you want to delete
3. Click the Delete button towards the top of the page(4 votes)
Is there any way to edit the number of questions for an assignment? Sometimes it seems like assignments are 4 questions long and others 7 or 10.(2 votes)- No, unfortunately there's not a way for teachers to change how many questions are in an assignment.
However, when assigning content using the Assign tab in your class, you can see the number of questions in the assignment is listed beneath the name of the content item.
There's not a good way to require less practice, but one way you can assign students more practice is by asking them to complete an assignment more than once. As long as you select "Different question set for each student" when creating the assignment, students will get different questions on each attempt. You can then verify that the students completed the assignment more than once by going to Assignments --> Manage and clicking on the number under the "Completed" column.(6 votes)
- Should I give a pretest for each unit to access skill deficiency before assigning task in Khan Academy?(10 votes)
Yes, both because it enhances subsequent learning, so long as you get feedback, and because you can do that on Khan Academy. Remember: Self-quizzing is the actual 'studying', even if it doesn't feel like it. Getting questions wrong, checking your answers, correcting mistakes—this accelerates learning.(3 votes)
My students already have Khan Academy accounts. Our district just set them (& me) up with Clever accounts. When at Khan's log-in page, I tried the "Continue with Clever" button. However, I was sent to a page that said "Khan Academy would like to create accounts for you and your students." I do NOT want new accounts for them.
How do I link their current Khan account with their Clever account? *How do I link my Khan account with Clever?* (I have over 2,000,000 energy points and don't want to loose them.)(7 votes)- you can also have them continue with their existing accounts, then log in with Google if your district has G-Suite. It will automatically connect with Clever(3 votes)
how do new students receive past assignments?(6 votes)
You will have to edit the assignment so that its due date is at or after the new student entry date. Next, edit the students that this is assigned to (you can do this en masse with the drop down menu in the Manage Assignments tab).(1 vote)
- Can a student access assignments after the due date?(4 votes)
- Yes, a student can access assignments after the due date, as long as the teacher has not deleted them. Students need to click on the Past tab when they are viewing assignments.(4 votes)
- Is there a way to assign assignments to all of of those have not yet practiced without having to go through and click each name (the way it was on the old Progress Reports)? The new way is not very user friendly... it's a pain to have to keep checking the list; mine also never scrolls all the way to the bottom of the class so the kids whose names begin with M-Z are never getting differentiated work. Thank you!!(5 votes)
- You will have to edit the assignment so that its due date is at or after the new student entry date. Next, edit the students that this is assigned to (you can do this en masse with the drop down menu in the Manage Assignments tab).(1 vote)
Idk how to let students in!(5 votes)- Do students receive an email notification when I have assigned them content? If so, is there a way for me to turn that off or dictate when it is sent?
(I want to be able to assign ahead of time, and at the same time, I do not want students to do the lessons before the scheduled day)(4 votes) - How? Do you help others with this?(4 votes)
