Course Mastery

Hello Dawn!

I think you're getting 'Course Mastery' and the 'Course Missions' a little confused.  The subjects will still have the 'Course Mastery' option, along with seeing how much of the course you have completed.  The Missions will be removed at the end of June 2020.

Let me know if you have any further questions or concerns :)

Best,

Loyalty

No. I am completely aware that Missions is leaving at the end of this month. We don't even use it anymore because of that. My daughter had 100% Course Mastery in many subjects and it went down. I read that you recently made changes and that anytime you do add or subtract lessons, the mastery goes down and they do the skills either again whether they are new, I don't know. My point was that we had to go back and spend time in subjects like 3rd, 4th, 5th, and Pre-Algebra. This discouraged my daughter because she already achieved mastery and now has to do more to fix it. Again, I understand your reasons, but I want you to know that if the goal is mastery and not grades, you need to take into account how making these changes affects the student's frustration level. If I look at Missions, which we abandoned, since you are removing it, she stayed at 100% there. So, please understand me that I am not confused. 

Oops!  My apologies!  I understand your frustration over the loss of mastery in the subject, I'm sure you know that the reason it dropped was because of the addition of material.  Khan Academy has recently been updating their content quite a lot, and along with entirely new subjects, they have also added new concepts to existing subjects, resulting in the course having more topics factored into the percentage.  I'll bring this up to someone who has more information on where the Course Mastery is headed, and maybe they can explain this better than I can :)

That's fine. I understand the concept that it happens and that they added a lot of material. I just wanted to communicate that they need to be mindful as to how that affects the student's mindset when they already worked hard to master the subject. It is a defeating feeling and I feel badly for my daughter who worked hard to see 100% and then have to go back to fix it. Not really feeling like I am getting understanding on what I'm trying to convey. 

HI Dawn,

Thank you so much for sharing your story here! I definitely hear your frustration regarding Course Mastery changing when we add and update our courses. My son is a rising 5th grader and neurodivergent, and he gets similarly upset when subject he's mastered suddenly changed -- there's something comforting to him about seeing it completed and being able to move on to the next subject, in addition to the great accomplishment is to have mastered something. I know it's not easy to explain why, or that comforting for them to know why those changes happen.

It is definitely on our minds when we update courses -- as you mentioned, we have to do this to keep our courses timely and high-quality, but Course Mastery percentages going down still stinks, and we haven't yet discovered a way to avoid changes in Mastery when we update course content. I know this isn't a satisfying answer, but your constructive criticism is definitely heard and appreciated.

Thanks again for being a part of our community, and please let me know if you have any other thoughts!

The nice thing about the soon-to-disappear Missions system is that when new skills were added to a course, students didn't have to retake a whole unit test to get to 100% mastery. Instead, they just had to go to the Mission page, where they'd get mainly questions related to the new skills to get back to 100%.

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