Article written by ASC Office of Distance Education Instructional Designer, Jessica Henderson.
Mastery Paths is a feature within CarmenCanvas that allows instructors to set customizable learning pathways for students based on previous assignment scores. Instead of offering a simple quiz to check for understanding and then immediately moving on to the next topic regardless of the score that students achieved, Mastery Paths provides a way to automatically assign additional tasks to those students that may not have demonstrated an adequate level of understanding based on the scores they obtained on the initial quiz or assignment.
Mastery Paths requires additional tasks for students that do not meet certain levels of achievement. Students are given multiple opportunities to return to the material, explore concepts in more depth, and demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways. In this way, the Mastery Paths feature, as the name suggests, aims to encourage mastery of the course material, rather than highlighting students’ performance on individual tasks. In addition, this feature can also help to reduce students’ fear of failure and support their ability beliefs by providing them with multiple opportunities to recover from their mistakes.
Utilizing the Mastery Paths feature requires some initial planning and effort upfront before publishing a course. After determining which assignments must be completed by all students, the next step is to determine the level of mastery necessary for each of these mandatory assignments. Once mastery scores have be defined, the type and number of assignments that will be additionally required by those students that do not meet the established preconditions must be identified.
For example, if an instructor wants a student to achieve at least 80% on a particular quiz or assignment before moving on to the next topic, a Mastery Path can be created that sets different pathways for those students who achieve between 65-79% and those who achieve less than 65%. The first group might be required to complete one additional assignment, choosing, for example, between writing a short essay or creating an infographic. For students that achieved below 65% on the first quiz, they might be required to complete more than just one assignment, and those assignments could be the same or different from the first group. The key is to identify and set up all possible assignments in CarmenCanvas in advance and then simply link any additional assignments – those that are not required of all students – so that they will be automatically assigned based on the learning objectives and criteria defined.