Revolutionizing Assessment: The Latest & Greatest from Mastery by Instructure

Alright. We're here to talk about Mastery Connect. This is this afternoon and assessment, and I'm really excited to get to be with you. We'll do some quick introductions when I get this going. Okay, there. My name is Dana Okerland.

I'm the group product manager for mastery Connect, and I spend my days thinking and talking about assessment and standards based grading. And I'm Jamie Dominic. I'm one of our solutions engineers on our k twelve team. I am Sonia Martinez. I'm also a solutions engineer on our k twelve team.

Alright. So we are gonna be talking about some productivity goodness. So there is some forward future facing information that we're gonna see here. I'm gonna ask for some feedback from you all as well. So just so you know, it is subject to change.

It may or may not make it on our roadmap, but I just wanna be really clear about that upfront. Alright. Oh, here at Instructure, we're always, working towards ensuring that everything we do here really speaks to our mission, which is as we've heard all along here, elevating learner success, amplify the power of teaching and inspire everyone to learn together. So this brings us to the Instructure Learning Platform. As you may already know, our platform has six primary focus areas as seen here.

Designed to make education more equitable and impactful for every stage and style of education. So you might be asking, why a platform? Well, really this integrated platform approach, allows us and empowers us to get a connected user experience for everybody, data all in one place, and then one trusted ed tech partner in structure. Okay? But for today, we are gonna focus in on the assessment section of the platform, Masterry Connect. With Masterry Connect, teachers get real time actionable, data with stand that standards based, insights and student mastery levels in an intuitive visual way. This can be accomplished with formative assessments, performance based task, and even district wide benchmarks.

Teachers can then immediately use this data to design targeted interventions collaborate with colleagues and PLCs and adjust instruction in the moment. And then additionally with Master Connect districts can have access to valid reliable content. Including item banks, and then in some states, even formative, prebuilt, and predictive benchmark assessments. Yes. Since we've dive a little bit more deeply into Mastery Connect, I'm curious before we jump in.

We have a full house in here, which is awesome. How many folks use Mastery Connect. Okay. We have some. How many have seen it before? You're you've seen it.

You kinda know a little bit. How many this is totally new to you, and you're here to learn like everything. Awesome. So we've got all three audiences. So no.

We'll kinda be presenting to everyone. But certainly we'll save time for questions and be available even after this one on one to make sure we meet your needs. But as we dive into really what Master Connect is all about We think of this it's model that you see here. So starting with identifying student levels of understanding, we have to know where our students are. So that we can target just what they need for their learning so we can target those interventions.

And then lastly, it helps us as teachers and educators self evaluate Did our teaching strategies work? Are the resources we're using working? Do we need to change our method of instruction? And really, our tool just helps with that ongoing cycle. So we're gonna talk about our back to school updates in-depth today, and we're gonna kind of take you behind the scenes with our product team to talk about how we developed these solutions and what we're seeing in our early days of this being out in districts. So we had a few goals for these updates. First, we wanted to save more time with our seamless integration with Canvas. We wanted to make sure everything we did feel very native to a teacher working within their Canvas course.

We also wanted to make sure they had easy access to their data. Mastery Connect is known for their teacher tracker view, how we can easily help surface the data educators need to make decisions. And then also make sure that the student experience is integrated, and we promote that student achievement through great assessment. Alright. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually show you a video of our back to school release just to give you an overview.

And I'm going to be able to do this seamlessly without any trouble. That's what's gonna happen. So Alright. So this will give you an idea of what we've worked on and what we're gonna talk about today. Massry Connect is the assessment solution designed to identify student levels of understanding, target students for appropriate interventions.

And allow teachers to self evaluate the teaching and learning happening in their classroom. Our newest product updates and features have been built to save time. And improve the day to day workflows for teachers. Let's take a closer look. With our latest update, We're taking a giant leap forward in integrating Mastery Connect and Canvas LMS.

Now, you can migrate Canvas classic quizzes to mastery connect assessments with only a few simple clicks. From a Canvas linked mastery tracker, you can convert classic quizzes to draft assessments in Master Connect, and align items on the draft assessment for standard and item level reporting. Once the assessment is aligned, a corresponding Canvas assignment is automatically created facilitating easy delivery through Canvas LMS. When it comes to creating assessments, it can be a time intensive exercise. To simplify and streamline the experience, The Masterry Connect assessment creation process has been completely redesigned.

The use of smart alignments removes several steps in the setup process, and important metadata can be found at the top of the assessment. When creating an assessment, all available items are accessible in one place. Rather than having to toggle between item banks to find specific content. Educators can now author items within the assessment creation process. And save assessments as drafts.

Finally, predetermined cut scores for assessments have been added. Facilitating common data across a school or district. To quickly find assessments that have been added to a mastery tracker, A new assessment list tab has been added to show all assessments associated with that tracker, allowing teachers to fine, deliver, and view reports directly from the tracker list. Our newest mastery connect features are designed to streamline workflows, save teachers time and provide access to the tools needed to positively impact student outcomes. To learn more about Mastery Connect features and our other products, visit instructure dot com slash k twelve.

Alright. So that was, oh, woops. That was our back to school release. Alright. So we watched the video.

So our team called this the Mac project. We talked and gave them four problems that we wanted to solve, and we tasked them. We said, we need to do this in a way that it makes sense educators and makes it super easy and seamless in the classroom because these problems are actually kinda hard. First, we needed Master Connect and cam users to feel really unified in the experience. We didn't want it to feel like you're using your mastery connect within campus.

We wanted it to feel very, very native. We also knew that our quiz content needed to be migrated and accessible from mastery Connect, so could it could be aligned to standards. We wanted to make the conversion and the movement of that content very simple. And we also needed to make sure that teachers could easily give assessments and a tool that really makes it fast. So that was those were our things.

So we came up with a solution that it's comprised of three different parts, and we called it so first, we're gonna migrate our classic quizzes to mastery assessments, align the view from the new tracker or align the content from the new tracker view, and then create in the new assessment experience. So we're gonna jump into each of these ideas and the features that go along with him, we're gonna start with the first step migration. So there's a lot of reasons why an educator may want to migrate quiz content into Master Connect. Standard alignment, data visualization is is one of them. Right? But if you're looking to take your assessment program to the next level, there are a few features that are different in Mastery than in Canvas.

We have assessment types like raw score assessments that make it quick and easy. We also have access to You can't see what I'm seeing. Yes, you can. I'm sorry. Anyway, you also have access to the Mastery Item Bank and the Mastery Item Bank supplemental.

So In Mastery Connect, we can seed your assessment creation experience with great standards aligned content. Alright. So before Our educators had to rebuild all of the items and quizzes in Mastery Connect. And I got the question quite a bit, like, why classic quizzes. So we analyzed quizzes that were built across the k twelve institutions in campus, and we actually found that more k twelve institutions were using classic quiz So that's why we make classic quizzes first.

And so it really makes it easy for educators because it'll it'll decrease the duplication of work have allow us to have that more integrated platform experience and streamline these workflows. Yeah. The repeat the question for the recording, is there a timeline for new quizzes conversion? Well, you stole my application in, like, the least way. There is. It is on our public facing road map right now, and my teams are working on it.

We are gonna be delivering that to you in q three. So we're very excited. Alright. So there are a few of our other favorite things about this. So I get to be like the Julie Andrews, like, in the Sound of Music and share all of the favorite things for each of the new release component.

So, within the migrate component, things that you might have missed, or you wanna check out, you can now create common assessments so you can share and care data, which is awesome. You can use classic quiz text items as passages in your mastery assessments, And you can open your classic quizzes in a new window to review content. So it makes it easy. You're not having to, you know, go back and forth. Alright.

Any questions about the conversion of classic quizzes? Great news. Good. Okay. I'm glad you're excited. Gonna ask for a little bit of help and audience participation because, you know, technology's been my friend.

But I have a quick QR code up here that's gonna open up a survey for I would love to know what you would like to see next. So there's three different options that we're investigating and thinking about. The first one is the ability to import and, external item So think of QTI uploader directly into Mastery Connect. So that's one thing we're thinking about. QTI is a standard format for items.

So if you export them from a different provider, you can easily Yeah. Exactly. Even though you don't need that for quizzes because we converted those for you. Right? Assignments in the tracker. So this would give you the opportunity to add a single standard to a campus assignment and see that data within your mastery tracker.

And then finally, the ability to import assessment scores. So bring in scores from other assessments that you take out side of mastery connect, like a state or end of level test, and see and compare that to your mastery connect data. So we'll see what people are saying. Alright. So I am seeing very much that oh, it's changing.

I love this. This is exciting. Oh. Data in the moment. See, I I'm not even gonna try and project but it's really fun.

It'll tell you the results. And my team is back at the office watching this right now, so they're very excited to hear your feedback come in, or see it come in. Alright. It's Okay. Yeah.

Alright. Well, we'll come back to this in just a minute, and I forgot the clicker. I think You know, this instructure con has been so much fun and it's taking it out of me. Alright. So while you guys vote, let's talk about what's next, so new quizzes to, mastery new quizzes to mastery assessments.

So we're gonna be doing the same thing we did with classic quizzes where you can bring in quizzes, you'll see the same item. It'll be the same process. We'll just slot them right on in there, and that is coming and committed in q three. So we're really excited about that. Alright.

So looking at what you all said, it looks like first, you guys are interested in assignments to the mastery tracker followed by state assessment data. So that's actually very interesting. Very excited about that. Okay. I'm gonna take it back to the team.

Alright. Let's talk about alignment. So Now that the new quizzes have been con now that quizzes have been converted into your master connect assessments, you have to align them to standards. We knew that we had to solve this problem, but in the old experience, it was really difficult because you had to go into the item bank, and you had to find the item, and you had to add the standard. It was really, really hard.

So now in our new experience, and I realize, like, this is not showing what I wanted to show either. But we're gonna go with it anyway. Teachers needed to be able to find the assessments to align them. In the old track review, what teachers had to look under those individual standards to locate an assessment, and it was really it was really tricky. So we built their new view in the tracker, the assessment list, so they could quickly find any assessment that's been added.

We'll get back to the content conversion in just a second, but I really wanna talk about the tracker assessment list. It's my favorite for a few reasons. I was really excited that we could add this to the tracker, because it was so difficult to find assessments in reporting. So we aligned it to content, and let me talk about sort of what we're seeing in the classroom. So this helps a little bit because and this is real data that we're seeing now that this has been turned on.

So at the top over here, you see our old tracker view where teachers had to go in behind these particular standards to find the assessments. And down here, what you're seeing is you are seeing our brand new tracker assessment list, where educators are accessing reporting. And this data is from our our real life production. So this has been out in beta since the end of May. And then released to everybody since the end of June.

And what we're seeing on the blue is the individuals who are accessing reporting in the old way. From this old view, and now who's accessing reporting from the tracker assessment list. And what this data is telling the product team is that we did the right thing. It's a lot easier to access that reporting because everybody's going to this new place for reporting. If you wanna go to the next slide for me, it'd be great.

The other thing that was really interesting is we're seeing that teachers are actually looking at their data more because it's a lot easier. Right? So here's our beta. We start to see it, and we're seeing a large variation. And the other reason I'm really excited about this is because this is It's summertime. Right? We have a very small amount of traffic on our site, but what we're seeing and what we're hearing is really positive.

And we're starting to see those outcomes come to life with the addition of these new features. I also think that stuff is so interesting, you know, coming from formally being a teacher and administrator, you often think with the tools you're using, like, how do they make the decisions that they make? How do they see what we're doing? And so I feel like, you know, we told Dana, this is like pulling the curtain back to see what product looks at, what how we listen to feedback, and how we implement those things. So I think those graphs are really powerful. Yeah. I'm really excited about it.

No. You don't need to go back to the video. We've spoken to it. I will do a live demo for anybody who wants it. But I don't think we need to go backwards.

So Yeah. So just a few of our favorite things for, you know, the assessment alignment was being able to manage benchmark assessments with status and the availability window, just making that easier to view. Being able to navigate directly to the corresponding Canvas assignment. Again, making it seamless between Canvas and Master Connect and then easily accessing the student view and the tracker, so you don't have to take extra steps there. Yeah.

Awesome. Alright. Do you wanna do a switch right quick Sonya? And we should be good to go. Alright. So we're gonna ask for your feedback again.

And so this is gonna be specifically around the tracker assessment list. There's three features, again, in a new QR code that we would love your feedback on while we talk about what's coming next. And the three features are number one unit organization. Are you interested in organizing your standards by unit? Is that some way that you would like to view your assessments within your tracker? Are you looking for more filter views? Do you want that flexibility? Are you wanting to view standards in mastery or remediation at most recently assessed? Would that be helpful? Or are you looking for metrics? Would you like to see the standards and mastery next to each assessment? Would you like to see that rolled up at the standard level? What is the thing that would be the most helpful to you as you're continuing forward and and if all and looking at your data? Alright. So what's coming next around the tracker assessment list? If you've been with me today, you've probably heard me talk about curriculum maps.

If you don't know what curriculum maps are in Master Connect, I really want you to. These are blueprints for a tracker. Right? So you can organize them at a team or at a district level so that it includes all of the standards, all of the units, all of the assessments you want to use. We are going to update the tracker. And you'll see up here at the top that we now have hero metrics, so you know how many assessments you have in the tracker.

How many standards, and if you've shared it with teachers or other teams. So it's a lot easier to see that. And we've also gone ahead and pinned some high usage right here on a sticky, you know, menu on the side. So as you scroll through that tracker, you no longer have to or I'm sorry, that curriculum map, you no longer have to go back to the top. It'll follow you.

So anybody who's used a curriculum map will know, like, how helpful it'll be to be able to create a unit or add an assessment or a standard right there as you're working in it. So this is committed. This is coming, in q three, and we're really excited about this as well. I wanna look at the data for before we talk about assessment creation just because I'm so nosy and I'm like, I'm just dying. Q3 education? Q3 as in as in q three, like as in we're working on it right now as in vice.

Business q three? Yes. Paul. Sorry. I don't understand all the time either. Okay.

Awesome. Alright. It looks like you all would like to see unit organization and then metrics, but metrics is a very strong second. Okay. Super helpful.

Alright. Creation. So I love this new assessment creation experience. It has been years, and I don't know how many assessments I created in Mastery Connect as a teacher, and then a district insultant, like millions. So when this came across, like, our team's plate, we were really, really excited to create and to build it for you.

So if we wanna go to the next slide, some things that in the past were really difficult were that you had to input your standards or your cuts scores. It was very manual. It was difficult to search. Are you able oh, god. See, look.

It's not playing the right one. It's just not our day y'all. It's just not my day. But now we have this beautiful new assessment creation experience, with the right items and assessments and improved item bank filters. So it's absolutely wonderful.

And I'm really, really excited for it. Okay. If you wanna go ahead to the next slide, a few things that we're seeing. So once again, we're seeing more usage of this. So the number of assessments published per user is increasing.

Since we've gone ahead and and released this feature, which is interesting because what we're we're seeing is that teachers are making more formative assessments. It's easier and it's faster, so it's being used more, which is great. And if we wanna continue on, all of the items are being created in line. So this is our new in line item authoring feature. On the top, I have our old item bank where you'd have to go to add an item, enter the content search for that item as you created an assessment and spend a bunch of time doing that.

Now, you author right here in the item bay, or in the assessment creation experience, and they're all So you can change it and edit it. It's no longer set in stone as you do it, mine and bank. So that's wonderful. The blue here is items in the old experience. And the green is items created in an in an, in our assessment.

So we're seeing that, like, the proportion of items created in assessment item authoring is is increasing as well, which is very interesting. The other thing we're seeing, and this one I'm not so sure about yet, still kind of experiment y is that more items are being created per users. So we're very interested to watch this as this comes out and see what teachers do with it. Because there's a really good probability that educators will go ahead and increase the number of items that they're authoring once again in order to create those formative assessments. So again, just highlighting a few of our favorite things Dana touched on a couple of these.

One is being able to set district level cut scores. Do we have anybody at the district level that's like, this will be amazing so that you can have consistency. Item filters count and being able to show selected items, so just increased filter options and making that easier as well. And then also Dana kinda touched on this, but being able to have things in draft, so your items and assessments in draft mode. Alright.

Our curiosities around assessment creation, once again, for you all, really excited to see what you have. Number one is an updated item bank. We know that inline item authoring for assessments is going to be really helpful. But sometimes when you're creating content at scale at a district, an item bank is a lot better and easier to use. So would you like us to update that interface? The addition of audio and video items, would it be helpful to have that as an option for student responses? And then finally, a live progress dashboard.

This would allow teachers in classroom to see student progress as they're taking the assessments and do a bit more like monitoring as that's happening. So interested to hear what you have to say there. But as we look forward, there are a few other features that are coming in this q three committed right now this fall for back to school, well, later back to school. But first off, is a student preview. Our student preview allows you to interact with an assessment the way a student would directly from that assessment creation So we're gonna add it right there where you're authoring your items and filtering so that you can make sure it's formatted the way you want it to be formatted and that you're able to navigate that as a student.

The other reason this is really helpful is because we've introduced sections on benchmark assessments. So now if you would like to have a calculator and a calculator free section as push out those district assessments, you're able to do that and test that as as you're ready to send that out. And then the other one we're doing is we're gonna be able we're gonna give you access to edit purchased item banks. And this one's coming a little bit later on our road map, but you will be able to clone an item, and you'll be able to edit that item and that ten. So now when you purchase the Masterry item bank or Masterry item bank supplemental, you can use those valid and reliable items as a starting off point for your content creation.

You can tweak them if you want to change the language a little bit, add an additional question to a passage or do things So it's just giving you all more flexibility with your content as you start, working through your assessment program. Yeah. So this one is committed in the second half of the year. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're really excited for that one. Alright. Just as like a little reminder and a recap, these are the three assessment or the three experiences we went through kind of in a jointed way, but we did it. And these are some of the features that are included right now in live in production. So if you log in to your Mastery connector, you're interested in a demo, like all of these things are there and ready for you as teachers go back to school.

There is a bit of a lift with training for this. If you've been using Master Connect for a minute, there are a bunch great training resources in the community. We have like on demand PD there. Our PD and services team are up to date on all of these. So they'll be able to help you and consult with you as you implement this in your school or district.

I didn't check the answers, but I'm really interested to see before we move on. To the next bit. And I think the next bit is Q and A. So if I'm remembering correctly. Alright.

So Thank you guys for the feedback today. This has been really helpful. Alright. I'd betting on audio video items. I think that that's gonna be the winner if it refreshes because conference wifi end this session.

Alright. Oh, good. Okay. Oh, you guys want an updated item face? You want that more than audio video? You're like, no. Please give me audio video right now.

I love it. Alright. Interesting. Okay. That's exciting.

Alright. So do you have any questions for us, for our team about Master Connect or about the process we go through to develop these features. And we're recording this So I'll walk around and hand you a microphone so we can make sure to capture your question. We'll start in the back here. So you talked about district push outs to, for assessments.

Can you do that by course? Can you do it? Is it made available? Anybody that's on the platform in your district, or can you do it specific to a course? And then can you do item analysis for those district assessments. Yeah. You absolutely can. So the way we structure is that you you push them out by standard set, which is aligned to a course. So, yeah, you can easily do that, and we have item analysis that you can export or view in app at a district level.

And I'd be happy to chat with you more about it and show you what it looks like. That's a good question. Oh, I'm coming up to you. Here we go. So we talked a lot about how quizzes will import into mastery.

If we're connect if we're creating in mastery, can we go back, get back, put stuff back into quizzes? No. It's a one way cycle, and the re let me explain my reasoning for this. So my so the way we approach this is individuals who would want to convert their quizzes to mastery assessments are implementing a standards aligned approach assessment, right? So we wouldn't want to necessarily go back to that quizzes experience to just have unstandard aligned content. Okay. Question number two, outcomes versus mastery connect.

Mhmm. What is the difference Yeah. There are some foundational difference differences between Mastery Connect standards and outcomes in your Canvas course. And this is one of the reasons why reconnected such as standards, a great standard solution for you all is we import those standards from academic benchmarks. So you have a source of truth that are aligned to the standards.

You don't have to do any importing or anything like that. All of your content that after you set it up for the district is there and aligned, and all the teachers share the same So that's automatically baked in, and one of the biggest differences between outcomes and standards in Mastery Connect. Is there anything you all wanna add to that? We recommend Master Connect if you're implementing a standards based approach in a K twelve environment because of the ease of reporting and viewing and creating standards line content. Right? Of course. For me, I I just know that it isn't at an expense, and sometimes those things disappear on you as an educator, and so there's a little bit concern of concern there.

Yeah. Yeah. And we're happy to chat through that use case with you for sure. Yeah. I'm sorry.

You said something about quizzes can be integrated into this. Can I hear a little bit more about that? So you can convert your quizzes to mastery assessments. So that's is but I don't think that that's quite the question that you're asking. Yeah. So the question was, I'm gonna repeat it.

How do you convert the quizzes? And my video didn't work for this, but in your Canvas link course up at the top, there's a gorgeous little canvas button, and it'll show you all of your quizzes associated with that course. So you can quickly pick the ones you want, and they're added as draft assessments to your tracker. And Sonia's gonna be Sonia's gonna just go live here on us. See, right here. Are you thinking of two new organizations? We'll connect.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Yeah. Oh, let me come back to you. I'm gonna hand you the mic.

So this might be a little forward thinking, but I'm gonna throw it out there. So if we're using we're using it and we're tracking students' standards, progression, and we realize that we're in situation where students might perhaps need like MTSS. Will there be potentially an ability to have our catalog of those interventions then linked so that they could automatically then flow into a student's workflow? I really love the way you think. Thank you. Yes.

Call me anytime. Yeah. So I actually was having this conversation a little bit ago with some members on team and some individuals at iste, but we were chatting about how powerful it would be to have that library of interventions associated with that data. Yeah. So we're definitely in just conversation mode around it, but I would You want someone to bait.

I'll call it. Okay. Alright. Once I build it, I'm calling you. Okay.

I love it. Alright. We've got a question in the back. Yeah. So here we are sitting.

We don't know each other. We are from higher education, and we're going like, we're in the wrong workshop. No. We're not. We have a question for you in, allied health programs.

For example, pharmacy nursing. They have additional accreditation, and they're pretty keen on this piece that you can do somewhat with a lot of work in Canvas right now. They come they're playing Canvas. Is this software or could could hire education use this software? To do institutional effectiveness at the program level. You know, that's a really interesting conversation that we'd love to have with you.

We currently don't have any partners in higher education, but I been receiving a lot of interest specifically from nursing education programs and teacher education programs, where this aligns so nicely. So, yeah, I'd love to have a conversation and learn more about your use case and and see what we can do because I think that there there's a way. Yeah. Right. Any other questions? Yeah.

Oh, let me bring you the mic. Oh, I'm really bad at that. Sorry. Over in the, European markets, there's a a print ship degrees are really on the growth and they're based standards based as well. Your platform would work really well if it was able to pull in professional standards on the fly or as they're updated, which they're updated on an annual basis, saves so much time because we're effectively currently looking at outcomes in Canvas, but the amount of leg work that's necessary to make that work for, high scale numbers is almost disproportionate to the outcomes that you're gonna get from it.

Whereas Masterry connect would sort of deliver on that because you're pulling all that stuff in. It reduces the admin time. So think about it. It would really a lot of people will be buying that. Okay.

Thank you. We appreciate that feedback. Alright. Well, I think we're at time. I did bring you a present.

Like I sent it. Yeah. Sonia will send them at Can I have one, though? Wanna tell them what it is because it's it's near and dear to my heart. So these are our Mac stickers. This is what we made for our development team as we did this project Like I said, we've been working on it for a year and nerding out.

And, my team has, like, worked, worked many long nights to get you these features, but It's our little mac burger with a mastery flag in our Canvas box because we really wanna make sure it's extra wonderful and delicious for you all. As we're integrating with Canvas. So I'm around Jamie and Sony. Yeah. I was just gonna say one last thing.

If you came today and you're like, I really still would like to get a deeper look at Master Connect while I'm Sonia and I will be at the Mastery Connect booth. If you've seen, like, the big instructor booth in the expo hall, We'll be there all night. So stop by. We're glad to chat with you, talk through any questions you have, and we're just appreciative that you came to our session. So thank you.

Yes. Thank you. And thank you for your patience. I appreciate you all.