1. The Basic Theory of MasteryPaths
MasteryPaths? What's the big idea?
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With MasteryPaths, "instructors and course designers can identify activities for each student’s learning path and differentiate assignments for required learning, optional learning, or choosing their own content and assignments within a specific path" (Canvas Release
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MasteryPaths are inherently flexible both in how they can be set up and how students learn with them once constructed. This provision of flexibility is central to Universal Design for Learning (UDL). For example, a 2017 "Network and Learn" web-based conference session
Links to an external site. (70 min) focused on the role of technology in providing flexibility in how students access content, take action, and simultaneously express themselves in differentiated ways (this is not generally possible without technology).
Rather than teach content in a way that ignores the existing knowledge of some students and the lack of prerequisite knowledge in others, MasteryPaths guide students through the content based on assessment results, placing the branching decisions on auto-pilot. Students who demonstrate that they already know about a given topic can move forward to more complex projects or skip over content. Students who need more information can take a path that supports them with foundational concepts to scaffold their learning.
One depiction of a MasteryPath may look like this:
It is important to design these such that the paths don't represent more or less work, but appropriate challenge for students. The end goal of using a MasteryPath is to ensure that all of your students learn the material. One is not "watering the learning down," but optimizing the way that students achieve (or extend) the goal.
Instructors can customize the design of MasteryPaths to meet the needs of students and the demands of the content:
- Number of levels (i.e., "paths"): choose between 2 and 3.
- Content: the nature of the content and degree of overlap across levels can be adjusted to yield appropriately challenging paths.
- Paths can be tailored to ensure that all students are able to achieve the goal (either learning the material or extending their knowledge).
Example
In this hypothetical MasteryPath, the "pre-test" would have assessed student concept mastery of basic lab notebooks and scientific measurement.
- Students who demonstrate mastery (20/25 or higher) are provided activities that will challenge them and extend their learning, including an assignment and a corresponding content page.
- Students who demonstrated partial mastery (13/25 to 19/25) can choose to either read a content page or complete an assignment (or they could independently choose to do both). Note that these are different items from the "Mastered" group and should challenge, but not over- or under-whelm these students.
- Students who demonstrated need for support (i.e., below 13/20) are given a chance to shore up their basic understanding through a lower-level assignment and corresponding content page and are then given a chance to take a quiz to demonstrate that they are ready to move forward.
In all cases, students are ideally being challenged to a degree that is reasonable for their current level of content mastery to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their learning without ignoring their variance.