Mastery Manager online...and more?

Another RMHS lover of +Mastery Manager is Human Geography and AP Economics teacher, Mr. +Chinh Pham. Like Mr. +Dan Jones (click here for previous post), Mr. Pham also takes advantage of the online feature. In his opinion, there are many benefits to using the online program including:

• His students receive immediate feedback on their assessments.
• He can create assessments in color which is very helpful for maps, graphs, etc.
• Students can “tag” questions which triggers a reminder to revisit it before submitting.
• Students can “eliminate” options from questions as they work toward the correct answer.
• He finds that students are more intentional when marking answers and don’t have “bubbling errors” like they can with the paper format.
• He finds it to be less work for him as he doesn’t have to bother with the answer forms (printing, passing out/collecting, the grading process, etc.).  
• If he finds an error on a test during Block 1, he can change it within minutes so that it’s not a problem for another class (or a waste of paper to reprint).
• If a student is absent/homebound, they can still easily take the assessment online.

Mr. Pham uses Mastery Manager for practice activities like ACT reading passages and also for assessments. Typically for reading practices and assessments, Mr. Pham will provide his students with a paper copy in addition to the online format as some students prefer to read on paper. Overall, he has a very positive opinion of the online format.

In addition to the use of the online features, Mr. Pham has started to delve deeper into the data reporting available through Mastery Manager. It is clear after speaking with him about assessments and data that he is a huge proponent of using data to make informed decisions to improve instructional design. Part of this data comes from using the item analysis function after the students have finished taking an assessment. These results help Mr. Pham to determine the strength of the test items and make improvements to the testing instrument for future uses. He also uses the data to compare one class to another, compare one cohort to another, and to evaluate the the strength of instruction as it relates to specific learning targets.  

a example of item analysis

Additionally, with these learning targets, Mr. Pham has started to use Mastery Manager as a way of giving his students better feedback. When a student receives the report on their assessment, they see a traditional score and also they see which questions are linked to which learning targets. He sections the exams so that the students can see exactly where their deficiencies may lie and are able to better understand how to proceed in their future work and understanding on the topic. In doing this, Mr. Pham is supporting his students so that they are able to “know” what they don’t know.  

Pretty powerful, right?

As mentioned previously, this is part of a series on Mastery Manager which will lend itself to conversations on assessment and student feedback. Next week’s blog post will feature Mr. +Paul Fraser and how he also uses content and performance objectives in Mastery Manager to facilitate increased student ownership of their learning.               

Do you use Mastery Manager in your class? Let us know and we can blog about you! Are you interested in learning about something specific on Mastery Manager? Let us know and we can blog about it! Do you like individual attention to learn something new? Schedule an appointment with one of us!