Mastery Admin Setup
Photo by NeONBRAND
The Business Problem
School districts are increasingly moving away from traditional A,B,C grades and towards a method of grading that focuses on a student’s mastery of different skills and concepts. Our current solution was not robust enough to meet the needs of the increasingly growing and vocal group of schools practicing standards-based grading. Additionally, the technical architecture of our previous solution would not hold up to the complexity we would need to add to make an impact in the market
Mastery Admin Setup
To power our new Mastery Gradebook we needed to create a way to set up the system using as much existing infrastructure as possible.
My Role
Lead Designer. Responsible for everything from research to design delivery.
Initial Research & Synthesis
I joined this project and immediately led the synthesis of the 12 user interviews the Product Managers had conducted about their needs around standards-based grading and mastery.
The summary of findings from the research synthesis
Key Research Insights
1
In order make education equitable, administrators need to ensure all teachers are assessing their students on the same learning standards.
2
Flexibility with the scale and calculation method is critical for adoption of our solution for district
3
-
Setup Flows
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Rapid Iteration & Testing
I set myself up for an ambitious weekly testing and iteration cycle for this project in order to move at the speed we needed to reach our goal of a coded front end in production by January 2019. Each week for 6 weeks I recruited and held user sessions to get answers to our lingering questions as well as test the newest design.
Examples of the design iterations I tested
Key Research Insights
1
Teachers want to use mastery data to place students into groups for more focused instruction on particular topics. This type of view was particularly exciting for teachers. They wanted to use this to create balanced student groups
2
While I hypothesized that full color cells would be overwhelming, I learned through concept tests that colorful heat-maps help teachers to get a better sense of the class’s progress. The more minimal design shown here made it harder for teachers to gauge their class’s understanding.
Final Design
Business Impact
Increased demo requests by 450% - the most of any Schoology email marketing campaign
Exceeded pilot goal of 30 school districts trying the Mastery-Based Gradebook by 250%