Hortonville Area School District

Hortonville Area School District is a “community that ensures every student learns at the highest level.” Recently, their Director of Learning, Chris Hansen, described the impact of implementing Mastery Connect and Canvas LMS to boost student success districtwide.

Hortonville Area School District is built on the philosophy of a Professional Learning Community (PLC),which means that they’re committed to creating “...an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.”

To implement this philosophy, they needed to achieve three objectives: focus on learning, establish a collaborative culture, and leverage data in an intentional way, according to Hansen. In order to be learning-focused, educators across Hortonville adopted the belief that all students could learn at high levels and accepted responsibility for helping students excel. To ensure a collaborative culture and establish a focus on results, teams across the district needed to establish guaranteed and viable expectations, collect evidence for knowing what students have learned (through strategic formative, interim, and summative assessments), and know how to respond when students did or didn’t master a concept or learning standard.

Hortonville identified Mastery Connect and its features such as Mastery Trackers, Curriculum Maps, Teacher Reports, and more, as integral to achieving these goals and building true PLCs districtwide.

Several of Mastery Connect’s features directly spoke to Hortonville’s PLC objectives, Hansen explained. Mastery Trackers, Teacher Reports, and Student Views created the opportunity for teachers to engage both each other and their students meaningfully while Curriculum Maps have both enabled teachers to focus on student learning and build a collaborative culture. Features like Assessment Delivery, Teacher Reports, Student Views, and Progress Reports allowed teachers to be results-oriented.

Mastery Trackers have served as a ‘key’ screen for identifying student mastery of topics and collaborating both with students and their guardians.

You can easily see how well you’re teaching a standard and how well your student is doing,” Hansen said, when describing them

In addition to Mastery Trackers, giving all teachers across Hortonville access to all assessments as well as pacing guides and standards within every unit in Curriculum Maps has proven to be invaluable, especially when onboarding new teachers, according to Hansen. Teacher Reports in Mastery Connect have also provided actionable talking points in many of Hortonville’s team meetings. These reports show a classroom breakdown of student mastery and near mastery of standards. It’s here where teachers can easily see where their classroom stands in relation to their peers, identify their strengths as well as who to reach out to for any standards they need support with. Hansen mentions that building a safe culture where teachers are unafraid to evaluate their own instructional efficacy and ask for help is critical to keeping these data conversations proactive. Finally, Student View in Mastery Connect has been transformative when it comes to how students and teachers think and talk about results.

“[Student View] has allowed us to move from a culture of students trying to get points to a culture of students trying to understand their learning. It's a magical moment...Kids stop asking how many points an assignment is worth and start asking questions based on the concepts and skills they need to master. This is how we communicate very specifically with them about their learning,” Hansen said.

After four years of using Mastery Connect, Hortonville chose Canvas LMS to consistently deliver and manage instruction, according to Hansen. Because of the integration between Mastery Connect and Canvas LMS, students and teachers in Hortonville can access course information, grades, and assessment data with a single login. Having all their materials in one place allows students to stay up-to-date with all coursework–from assignments to assessments– wherever they are located.

All things considered, the dynamic integration of Mastery Connect and Canvas LMS supports Hortonville in their commitment to building a true PLC culture and elevating student learning. Looking ahead, Hansen is optimistic about Hortonville’s partnership with Instructure.

“...The footprint of the company [Instructure] is thinking about all areas of instruction, of assessment, of teacher collaboration, the whole thing. If you are a Canvas user and not using Mastery Connect, then I’d highly recommend adding [Mastery Connect].”