Mastery LearningSuccess for Every Adult Learner

Making the

Light Shinein the

Adult Ed Classroom

Mastery LearningThe Need for Mastery Learning

The challenges of the adult ed classroom are clear. Each student has a different story and different skills. How do you get students to learn before the class moves on without them?

Mastery learning postulates that every student should have the benefits of a personal tutor. Since a classroom can’t provide a tutor for each student, what elements of tutoring can be implemented in the classroom to maximize learning?

A personal tutor provides two main things... enough time to learn and appropriate help when needed.

The Foundations of Mastery Learning

In the 1960s, John Carroll outlined mastery learning, and Benjamin Bloom developed it in the 1980s. Over the last 30 years, dozens of studies have identified elements that significantly improve learning speed, retention, and performance. Dr. Bloom defined a process that allows students to master skills through sufficient time, deep instruction, and ongoing formative assessments.

The Results of Mastery Learning

Bloom’s research compared a traditional classroom, a mastery learning classroom, and a personal tutor. In the mastery learning classroom, over 80% of all students achieve the highest levels of performance.

Traditional Classroom Achievement

Aptitude Achievement

Mastery Classroom Achievement

Aptitude Achievement

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Mastery for Every Adult Learner

Up until now, it has been impossible to implement mastery learning principles in the adult ed classroom. Students’ needs are too varied, and teacher resources are too limited. Essential Education has changed this. Our powerful adaptive learning system creates a truly personalized experience for every learner. Mastery is the norm, not the exception.

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Addressing Problems in Adult EducationWhat problems do you face in the adult ed classroom?

q Students aren’t independent learners.

Students often need help organizing knowledge so they can understand and remember it. They can get easily overwhelmed and discouraged because they have difficulty connecting what they are trying to learn to what they already know. They lack basic study and goal setting skills.

q Students have gaps in knowledge and skills.

While students have experience with many concepts, their understanding is often flawed and incomplete. Pushing students into new material before they have mastered foundational materials limits their progress and is a key reason students stop coming to class. The challenge for the teacher is identifying these prerequisite skills and gaps. Placement tests are generally not enough to solve this problem. Deeper assessment tools are required.

q Students learn at different speeds.

A common learning obstacle for adult learners is that they learn at different speeds. Students need to move through some material slowly, repeating lessons several times before they fully comprehend the content. The challenge for the adult ed instructor is to find ways to give all learners the time they need to master the material. When learners don’t have sufficient time to master concepts, they may leave programs before completing. This is one reason for the lower attempt rates on the new HSE tests.

q Students are not strong readers.

Student difficulties are complicated by the fact that many adult learners are not strong readers. Low comprehension skills and vocabulary make it difficult to learn concepts in social studies, science, and mathematics. The challenge is how to incorporate core reading skills into all subject areas.

q Students lack motivation.

Motivation is crucial for adult learners. Education has often not been a very positive experience for adult ed students, who may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what the need to learn. On top of all the other jobs of adult ed teachers, they need to help their students deal with motivation issues.

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TeachingPrinciplesforMasteryA mastery learning classroom addresses the issues of adult education by providing the tools for students to learn each skill before moving forward. By implementing five principles, the mastery learning classroom mimics, as closely as possible, a personal tutor for each student.

1 Identify Skill Gaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Identify gaps in student understanding that need to be filled. Students can only move forward if they have the necessary foundation.

2 Chunk the Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Chunk learning into manageable pieces that students can accomplish in a couple of weeks. Smaller chunks are easier to absorb and to track.

The Student HomeRoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3 Instruct for High Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Students need learning materials that they can connect to and comprehend and that approach or explain concepts in different ways.

4 Use Smart Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Use formative assessments to track student progress. Consistent formative assessments keep students on the right track toward success.

5 Give Corrective Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Alongside assessment, use feedback to reteach and correct student misunderstandings. Corrective instruction targets students’ weak areas and promotes learning.

The Diagnostic Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

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1 Identify Skill Gaps

What does the student need to learn?

One of the foundations of mastery learning is assessing the student’s missing prerequisite skills.

In math, for example, a student may struggle with fractions because they do not clearly understand numeric relationships. Once the student learns relationships on a number line, the student can quickly learn operation skills with fractions.

Assessing missing skills is a crucial step in educating adult learners. If missing foundational skills aren’t identified and addressed, the student struggles with gaining mastery of the primary skill. Here’s how we solve this learning obstacle for your adult learners.

Solutions from Essential Ed

Instead of throwing the student into material they are not yet ready for, our Academy instruction starts with building a strong foundation of understanding and skill. Because we start with this crucial step, our students actually move through the complex material much more quickly. We see much lower dropout rates because the student does not feel lost or frustrated.

Step One: Identify Prerequisites

In Essential Ed Academies, students start with a built-in initial smart assessment that identifies the degree of their skill mastery against the targets of the educational goal they are working towards.

Step Two: Customized Learning Plan

The program uses the diagnostic data from the student’s pre-assessment to automatically create a customized learning plan. The first lessons in the learning plan teach the student’s missing foundational skills, the building blocks needed to move on to more complex skills.

Step Three: Track Student Progress

The built-in diagnostic center gives teachers real-time skill mastery reports that detail student performance on each target and skill, identifying gaps. As the student progresses, the mastery report shows the student’s most current performance.

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Assessments identify skill gaps and prescribe learning.

Each question is tied to specific skills that determine assignments and review.

2 Chunk the Learning

How much can the student absorb?

Mastery learning breaks materials down into bite-sized chunks that the student can absorb. Each “chunk” must be learned before moving forward. There are several reasons for chunking.

1. Smaller learning chunks allow students to see the results of their efforts quickly and motivate students to keep learning.

2. Chunking forces students to focus on one piece of the learning, instead of getting ahead of themselves and skipping foundations.

3. Chunking also assures that students have mastered a skill before moving forward.

Chunks of learning are defined by two criteria. First, how much content is required to teach a discrete set of skills and knowledge? Next, what does the student need to learn to gain mastery?

Solutions from Essential Ed

Chunked Lessons, Units, and Levels

We chunk the learning into small units with built-in smart assessments. In their customized learning plans, students have easy-to-achieve sections to master, which builds learning confidence.

Maximize Understanding and Retention

Students are given the time and deeper instruction to master each concept and skill before moving on to the next, so their overall acquisition of knowledge is faster.

Progress Motivates Students

Easy to accomplish unit-based learning allows the students to focus on one “chunk” of learning at a time and see forward movement. Students stay motivated because they can see the direct result of their study time and know what they need to do next to achieve mastery learning. The student HomeRoom lets the student to see forward progress and performance.

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Learning is chunked into easily absorbed units.

Students progress through chunked, easy-to-accomplish units.

Learning delivery focuses the student on one task at a time.

The Student HomeRoom

Motivating Students

Because of the sheer amount of material most adult ed students need to learn and the gaps in their understanding of basic concepts, they easily get discouraged and frustrated with their progress.

Mastery learning principles are changing the motivation landscape for adult ed programs. Students are able to progress quickly because instruction is customized to their precise needs. The result is that students see success on a daily basis, and nothing motivates more than success.

A Personalized Dashboard

Academy programs give students a personalized learning dashboard where they see the immediate results of their efforts. Learning is in many ways a transactional experience. The student invests time and expects to see the results of these efforts.

A Picture of Progress

The HomeRoom shows students exactly where they are and what they have achieved. It gives students a way to see the results of their efforts in tangible movement toward their learning goal. This motivation drives the student to put in the time and effort to reach mastery level learning.

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The next step forward

is always right here.

Progress through the course

Practice test achievement

The HomeRoom is the student dashboard.

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Students see performance and progress.

Easy to Use at a Glance

The HomeRoom provides easy-to-use tools to track progress and access learning. Students can begin by simply accessing the next lesson and watching progress, but over time, can learn to use the HomeRoom tools more deeply to understand their learning.

Mastery level for each unit chunk.

Click to access review

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Connecting Effort to Progress

Study time has a clear connection to progress. By tracking study time against a goal set when the program is started, the student can see their effort reflected in their HomeRoom. Linking effort and results creates motivation.

Time studying leads to achievement.

Students see if they’re meeting their goal.

Is the student paying attention?

In mastery learning, instruction is appropriate, relevant, and meaningful to the student. Research has clearly demonstrated that instruction quality determines the speed, degree, and ease of learning. Poor content produces poor learning.

Many adult learners are not strong readers and lack basic learning and study skills. In consequence, they do not always follow every part of a classroom lecture and cannot always achieve deep understanding from printed material alone.

Solutions from Essential Ed

Our high-engagement content is taught with personal, direct, interactive instruction, rather than an impersonal text-based slide show. The student is immersed in a virtual classroom of adult students who explain, activate background knowledge, and present material in multiple learning styles.

Accessible Learning

Academy lessons personally engage the interest and attention of the learner. Instead of requiring self-directed reading, they restate, reinforce, and use multiple types of media.

Interactive Learning

Students must engage with the learning and be active. They learn to think more clearly because they are interacting with our virtual students, not just reading text on a screen.

Diagnostic and Responsive Learning

Lessons provide reteaching based on student performance and interaction. Interaction provides both engagement and reinforcement.

Higher-Level Learning

Lessons model thinking concepts with instructional characters. An emphasis on problem solving, applying principles, analysis, and creativity enables students to relate the learning to problems and situations in day-to-day living. Students build skills to pass the new HSE exams, as well as move on to better jobs and higher education. They can continue learning beyond the adult ed classroom and cope with a rapidly changing world.

3 Instruct for High Engagement

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Multimedia lessons engage students.

Multimedia classroom experiences

Engaging interactions and explanations

How much did the heartrate rise between 11:00 and 11:30?

CHECK ANSWER

4 Use Smart Assessment

Is the student learning?

In mastery learning, the focus is not on summative assessments, but formative assessments that check whether students are learning during instruction. Assessments are not one-shot; they are part of an ongoing effort to help students learn.

Solutions from Essential Ed

Each chunk of learning comes with its own integrated smart assessment which analyzes student performance, provides up-to-date information on student skill, and indicates needed corrective instruction.

Assessment Reinforces Learning

Our Academies give students continual parallel formative assessments that help determine the effectiveness of the instruction and offer students as many chances as they need to demonstrate mastery and experience success.

Automatic Assessment Informs Instruction

One of the most important features of our Academy mastery learning software is that it applies this teach-and-assess cycle automatically. This is the power of our built-in adaptive learning engine. It is continually gathering data about the student and then using that data to make informed teaching decisions to maximize mastery for the student.

The automatic mastery system tracks data from assessments, providing information to students and teachers to inform instruction on multiple levels.

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Students are continually assessed.

Periodic assessments give current, useful data.

Students, teachers, and the mastery program

modify instruction based on data.

5 Give Corrective Instruction

How can you reinforce learning?

A critical element of mastery learning is giving students immediate feedback and assigning the needed instruction. This is the reason that formative assessment is so important: so that the learning can be adjusted to the student’s needs.

Mastery learning feedback:

1. Shortens the feedback time so that the student knows immediately how to improve.

2. Couples feedback with responsive reteaching so that the student can improve.

In a classroom, giving instantaneous feedback and corrective instruction to multiple students can be daunting, but our Academy programs provide reinforced learning automatically.

Solutions from Essential Ed

Immediate Feedback and Correctives

Academies teach with an interactive conversation between students and their virtual teacher, Leonard. When students respond, they receive immediate feedback, teaching, and explanation.

Responsive Review at Multiple Points

At the unit assessment, corrective feedback is given for every missed question. After units and levels, the program identifies and recommends review lessons personalized to the student’s performance. Review lessons reteach skills and knowledge where the student underperforms.

Feedback on Progress

In the HomeRoom, students always know what to study next, how they’re doing, and how far they have to go. Progress is sped up when students show understanding or slowed down when they haven’t learned the content.

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Corrective feedback is integrated into

lessons and quizzes.

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Corrective instruction is given at multiple levels.

Multi-Layered Corective Instruction

With multi-layered corrective instruction, students can master material much more quickly because the instruction zeros in on the precise skills they need. Time spent in confusion and frustration when the learner doesn’t have the foundation understanding is eliminated.

Feedback with correctives allows students to learn at their own speed. But more than that, it changes their fundamental view of what learning and education is. For the first time, students see that they can actually learn things that have confused them in the past. They become true learners. The results are astonishing.

Automatic and teacher-assigned review appear in the HomeRoom.

Sophisticated Tools for Tracking Data

Personalized teacher interventions enhance mastery learning, and Essential Education makes those interventions possible by providing instant and easily accessible information about student attendance, performance, and progress. The interface facilitates communication with learners and custom intervention. Academy mastery learning programs give teachers a set of very sophisticated yet practical tools to track student progress and intervene when necessary.

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The Diagnostic Center

� Monitor student activity

Dashboard reports allow teachers to see who has been working with the program and who has been absent. Study time reports show the actual time each student has spent studying in and out of class.

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� See practice test scores

At a glance, teachers see the scores students have achieved on practice tests for each subject. Then they can drill down and see scores on all the attempts of each practice test. Teachers can see the relationship between study time and progress on the HSE practice tests.

� Check needed skills

The skill mastery report breaks down assessment targets into component skills and provides up-to-date information on student performance. Using the 24 built in HSE assessments, the program shows what skills students have mastered and what skills they need to study.

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� Add assignments

Personalized teacher assignments augment the customized study program.

� Customize learning plan

Teachers can access and modify each student’s learning plan, providing truly custom learning from the teacher’s informed perspective.

� See student progress

The Student Overview gives teachers access to students’ current HomeRoom assignments and reports. Sit down with students individually to talk to them about their progress and next step. The Student Overview shows what students are working on, how much time they have been studying, and what they have mastered.

Keep Learning on Track

Many adult learners need a helping hand to keep moving because they are not independent learners. Our diagnostic reports give both the teacher and the student a scaffold for success to keep motivated and excited about learning and reaching their goal.

Implement Mastery Learning in Your Classroom

Visit our website for a preview of mastery learning software.

www.passGED.com/educators/

Contact your sales representative for a demo.

Call 1-800-931-8069 for answers to all your questions.

Try out your mastery learning demo account.

Compare mastery learning with your current practices.

Experience student success with mastery learning!

Essential Education | 895 NW Grant Avenue | Corvallis, OR 97330