Mastery Connect Back To School Best Practices

Okay. We will go ahead and get started. Thank you again for attending the webinar series for back to school. Today, we'll be focusing on mastery connect best practices. We will also be focusing on a few product updates that will make your beginning of the school year more smooth. So thank you for joining me today.

My name is Tamara Short, and I am the product specialist at Instructure for the assessment value, which focuses heavily on the MasteryConnect product, but also quizzes inside Canvas. Today, we'll be focusing on the product MasteryConnect and how you can prepare for a smooth beginning of the school year. During this presentation, if you have any questions, please go ahead and put them in the chat, and I will monitor that as we go. And, of course, there'll be time at the end, to answer those live and to address any additional questions. So just real quick, our agenda today, I will be going over the updates first, just because and that provides me new information to help you prepare for the school year with some of our updates.

We focused on making sure that we had a smoother transition for you as you begin the school year. Then we'll focus on rostering, curriculum maps, checking that profile, creating trackers, how to use your item banks, and then, of course, looking at the archive data. The last slide will then be resources for you to access things inside the community to know what is coming and how to prepare yourself. One of our very first, updates I wanna go over did become available in April. This allows you as a Canvas and MasteryConnect user to align any Canvas assignment to your mastery tracker.

This allows you to take anything built in Canvas and put it inside Master Connect. So if you have an assignment that has already been built out or is based or is more of a project based assess assignment, you can then align it to a standard and be able to push it back into the tracker. This allows you to monitor that assignment and know what your students are doing and track the progress including that assignment. At this time, it is only for a single standard, and we are investigating and looking, to add more standards so that you can take one assignment and align it to more standards. But at this time, it is a single standard alignment.

Oh, just also so you know, as I go through this, this slide deck will be shared out with a list of attendees, after this presentation so that you do have access to click on any links, inside the presentation. The our other new release, which was pretty big lift for us, was our analytics dashboard. If you have not noticed already when you log in to MasteryConnect, every user now sees an analytics tab. This analytics tab reported, replaced our reporting tab, and so you are able to see visual data all the way from a district admin down to a classroom teacher that looks familiar and similar so that you can have more productive conversations around your data and how to target those interventions. As a district admin, you are able to see the overview for your whole school, your whole district, and then the school admin will have the permissions for the school.

And then, of course, the teacher can only see that data for the students that are in their trackers. This data is really helpful, as you move forward to be able to drill down more specifically on what you need. You are now able to drill down, by standard or multiple subjects or multiple classes and can see exactly who's being assessed, what standards are being assessed, and how they are achieving those standards. Of, the best way to learn more about our analytics is we do have a whole section now in our community on these analytics, but also just to get in and start playing with it, especially that new filter tray. We also just released the ability to clone purchase items.

So if you have purchased any of our item banks, the supplemental, the mastery, or now our new college prep item bank, you are able to clone the items from that bank. This allows you to adjust any of those items that you may want to change the amount of answer choices, change a few of the wording, or even just use the passage. You can now also search for a passage and then use that passage and build your own items to match those purchased bank passages. This is something that is opt in. So if this is something that you're interested in, and you wanna learn more about, you will reach out to your CSM, and they'll be able to turn that on for you and provide you the additional information.

Along with that cloning project was the clone and realign. This is a real time saver for those states who have changed their standards. So if your state has changed your standards again, you're now able to clone your assessments and realign them to a new standard set. There is, sometimes an error if we have built those assessments with any of our purchase item banks, then the remapping will automatically identify those new standards that have been realigned to that new standard set. In some cases, there was no realignment or the item was removed.

Then you will be able to see that those items were removed or cannot be realigned. If any items were created by your users and they were authored, those obviously did not get automatically remapped, because of the re the cross listing on our back end. And so those items would have to be, cloned and recreated and then added again to that assessment. But this does save time, to be able to quickly realign to that new standard set, which I will be going over later as helping you prepare for your back to school. An additional feature that we just released, just, only a week ago, we have now released district approved course.

So if you're familiar with our district approved resources, you can build out any district curriculum app or district assessment and toggle that button on for district approved to help teachers identify what assessments and curriculum maps are created by the district. We have now taken it one step further, and we now have district approved course. This allows you to lock in your core. So when you are onboarding and through your implementation, you were you did most likely select a default core, a core that, your district would be using, and it would prepopulate in anything that the teacher or user were creating. Now with district approved, it doesn't only prepopulate, but it actually locks them into that core.

We have found that many times, common district formatives or common district benchmarks cannot be delivered or are not being added to the tracker because of the lack of the correct core being used. So this is to help streamline, that process, and it will lock the approved course so that teachers are for sure choosing the correct core, whether it be packed or unpacked or whether it be the common core or your state core. It only allows them to select the course that you have chosen. This is, again, something that can be enabled, by your CSM. So it is something that you can choose to opt in, and then you would notify them what course you wanna use, so that everybody is creating from the same core, and all those curriculum apps and all those common assessments can be easily accessed and added to trackers.

If you do happen to be, a customer who also purchases our predictive benchmarks. This will actually already be enabled automatically for you to ensure that those approved course are matching the content assessment team's benchmarks for that easy, seamless flow to the trackers. Also, as a district admin, we have gotten a lot of feedback that, sometimes you just want your teachers to stop creating trackers, and you want to have a deadline, so that there's no duplications or extra trackers being created after a certain point. We have now added this simple feature where a district admin can toggle on or off, allowing teachers to create trackers. On this, it would be found in the manage teacher page under a district admin.

This basically just turns off teacher creation for the tracker. So if you have a set deadline that you want those teachers to stop creating, then you can just once that deadline has come, toggle the button, and then it will not allow teachers to create anymore. They will get a message when they click on create tracker that says that it has been disabled. Many other people also, do a lot of tracker creation, at the beginning of the school year professional development sessions. And so then after that, they don't want anybody getting back in and creating trackers.

So they also may turn on at that point. So this is something that is just already on and active in your accounts. If you haven't also already noticed, our color palette just changed last week. We have gotten a lot of feedback that the yellow was very hard to see, and was not accessible. So we have changed our color palette to make it more accessible and allow more contrast.

So every color has changed just a little bit to provide that contrast. If you already had changed your scale level and updated your own color palette to different colors that you prefer prefer or that match your end of year testing colors, you would not be affected by that because those were custom set. Anything that was set default, those were updated by our new color palette. This doesn't mean that you're stuck on these colors. You can still request a custom change, to your colors, through support.

You can submit a ticket if you would prefer different colors, now that there is a new palette. So those were just a couple of the updates. Like I said, I really wanted to focus on those first so that it can kind of provide a smooth transition to what you need to prepare for and how to move forward. As you can see, some of those are definitely created and built to help with the beginning of the year practices. So the very first thing, that you want to check and confirm is your rostering.

This is sometimes a step that's overlooked because you probably have something set up with Clever or or something set up with, ClassLink or through one roster that is just automatically syncing. But we always suggest about two weeks before school starts, make sure that your correct data is being sent to MasteryConnect. And please understand that if you're also a Canvas user, the rostering is still separate at this time. We're still moving forward to try to integrate both of those, but know that you have to check both to make sure that both products are receiving the correct file. This just helps for a smoother beginning of the year to make sure that that data is the twenty four twenty five school year data and that all sections are being pulled correctly.

If you notice any discrepancies or things that are not showing accurately, please report those to support, because they have the accessibility to troubleshoot on the back end and make sure that we are receiving the correct files. If you happen to roster manually and, you are not syncing through any other program, you would definitely want to reach out to support because they'll provide you with that manual upload template to upload your new sections and students for the upcoming school year. And so that's only for those people who are rostering manually through CSVs. If you are not a user of curriculum app, there's no better time like today, to start a new practice to streamline and make things more effective, at a higher level. What a curriculum map is basically a scope and sequence of your different subjects and grade level.

And what it does is it just allows everything to have a common place. So it is just a list of all the standards that are associated with that core. But then you can organize it into units, to match your pacing guide. Add any assessments, whether they be common or quick checks or summative assessments, those can be added to a curriculum map, and then these curriculum maps can be shared. So as a district, you can build out these curriculum maps and then share it with all the teachers at the district who teach sixth grade sign sixth grade math.

And then they are all using the same map, and their trackers all look the same. And this provides for even better conversations as a district as you start using those common ground and you know who is teaching what, what are they teaching, and then that data is familiar across the whole district. These maps can be be a a a district level and can have additional collaborators who can help organize and add those assessments. If you are one of those lucky states that did have your standards changed this year, unfortunately, there's not a way to just clone and change a curriculum map, to a new standard set. They do have to be recreated, because their foundation is the standards, so they do have to be recreated.

And then, once those have been created, you can then clone those assessments and realign them and put them back into the new map. Maps are shared through a teacher's profile. So depending on what that teacher has selected off that profile. So please remind your teachers and check-in to make sure that any teachers who have transferred or changed subjects or grade levels, they're gonna wanna make sure to update their profile if you are using those district curriculum maps to ensure that they get the correct map. You do not need to do anything to reshare, those maps.

It is all based off of what they select in that profile. So as soon as their profile is updated, the maps will immediately just automatically share with those new teachers in that grade level or subject. And I do have, on most of these slides, a link to the community help guide that walks through each of these step by step. So for the fun one, that always seems to be, the most difficult, because you do have so many users and so many teachers creating trackers. Like I said, we have tried to help streamline this, for you, but tracker creation is really important.

Most of the time, it is something that falls on the teacher unless you have set up some kind of session where all teachers get together and create at once or your coaches help with that or, different levels of admins help create those in behalf of the teacher. But whoever is creating them, they do have to be aligned to that correct standard set. As you know, nothing can be added if it is not, and you get that nasty error saying that the standards do not match. So if you are a Canvas user, please be sure that your teachers are creating their trackers directly into Canvas. There is no need to log in to MasteryConnect separately.

They can go right to their course and link their tracker to the mastery tracker right inside their Canvas course. Of course, they can select to use from a curriculum app or from a standard set. Or even now, that district approved core, if that is turned on, they will not even need, have any other option but to choose from that core. If you are, using curriculum maps, then you're gonna encourage them to continue to use from the curriculum map. Please don't forget to cross list first.

As a Canvas user, you have the beauty to be able to cross list all your sections that are in the same course. Cross listing does have to be done first and then the tracker created. And then that allows for the mastery tracker to pull in all of those sections so that you have one mastery tracker for just that one course, including all sections associated with that course. For those only using Mastery Connect, you would build right inside MasteryConnect from either that curriculum app or standard set. Moving forward and getting into the new school year, you may want to update any of your assessments or, maybe realign them.

This is a perfect time to do that, to have your teams or curriculum directors look over those assessments and make sure they are exactly what you want. They can be edited or cloned and sent to a draft so that you can add or take away any items. And make sure that those are the assessments that you wanna use again for the upcoming school year. And then, of course, any assessments are created. If you're using those district curriculum maps, you want to pull those in to make it easier for your teachers to access them.

This is the perfect time to also build out any of those interim or benchmark assessments, to know exactly where your students are gonna be at and to prepare for those assessments, those bigger assessments before, the back to school gets busy. If you happen to purchase any of our item banks, or you've just purchased a new bank, make sure that you make it available to teachers, by going into your admin and making that available for teachers so they also have access to build from that map. And, this is a perfect hot spot. I did get a couple of questions in the chat, and I'm just gonna answer those, live right here. Can you share a tool or video for teachers to use to help them create their trackers? Most definitely on the resource page, there is a couple of different things that you can use, to help build trackers.

The community definitely has step by step, maybe not a video, but I can definitely hunt down a video or create a video and make sure that I add it to this deck before it is shared. Somebody else asked, Charity, is it possible to set district approved course for some courses, content areas, but not all? Also, is it possible to turn off turn on creation by school? These are excellent questions. Currently, right now, for our district approved core, it is a core that has to be set per subject, but you can select more than one. So let's say that you are a district that some grade levels or courses use common core, but the rest of the grade levels and courses use your state core, you can select to have both fours showing, and those are the only two that would show. Now let's say that, for other subjects, this is where we've gotten the question a lot.

For other subjects, it is hard to just choose one core to show. You can select all of them, and that's what we have been doing for some of our users to, just select all the CTE standards for that state and make those available as a district approved so it still shows those approved court has been enabled, it does require you to select one. So, unfortunately, there's not a way to turn it on for math, but not for English. But like I said, you can choose multiple, sets. So if you just know that there's, like, two or three that need to be selected, then you would just include those as part of the district approved.

But like I said, what it does is it really limits the teacher from going too far off, because even with our default core, the default core would immediately show, and it would be set. But when the teacher clicked on it, they would have access to all course, all states, all course, in that subject area. Well, this will, like, tone it down, and only give them, certain access to just a few. Then, for the tracker creation, on or off, I believe this is actually a great question, and this just came live a week ago, and so I actually am not positive. I think it is something that is only turned on at the district level, but I am definitely happy, to quickly check that and, let you know, if it can be turned off at a school level.

And then another one just came in. Oh, perfect. I think we got all of them. And, another coworker just put in the community guides for, building trackers. So that is a quick community guide on how to build trackers, and it will break down, to whether you're building inside Canvas or mastery alone.

Okay. Perfect. Scott, that is a great question. And like I said before, you can't walk in a CMAP. So if you're using district approved curriculum apps, and that's what your teachers are used to, they're gonna continue to do that.

Because whatever you built the curriculum at, you're basically locking them into that curriculum, already. And like I said, we really encourage curriculum maps, just because then it is a common place and that course already chosen for them. So you would just still have that grade six math teacher to use that district curriculum map, and then the science teacher would just choose from a standard set. But when they clicked on science, they would only see the set that you selected as district approved. So that that it would, your math teachers would still go and bill from the curriculum maps like they're used to because they're already set in the standards.

And then anybody who doesn't have a curriculum map, when they select their standard set, if you chose district approved, it would just show the core that you wanted, set and locked for the the users. Correct, Scott. And then, is there a tutorial for teachers to add curriculum assessments and or exit tickets to a mastery connect. Yes. There's definitely, different guides on how to add any type of assessment to mastery connect, whether it be document based, rubric based, or an item bank assessment.

So we can definitely make sure that you get access, to that. Great questions, and I really appreciate asking them because that this is the whole reason we had this is to be able to help, provide you with information and what exactly you need, to kick off the school year. One thing that we do get a lot of questions as, asked at the beginning of the school year is teachers and district admins wanna see what happened last year. Where was the student at last year, or where where did my district perform on this assessment last year? Because if you are using that common assessment and you are using curriculum maps, you're basically giving that assessment over and over again year over year. So with our new analytics dashboard, you're able to drill down on to that assessment, and you're able to drill and down and see that assessment, but also change that year.

So admins can access any of that district school data from the dashboard by selecting, the school year, from the the specific fields in that filter tray. Then you can see how your school performed last year, whether it be on a subject area or on an assessment. You would always need to make sure to include archive data, because the archive all the data was archived, on your school rollover, whether that was July one or you had a custom date. And so include the archive data, and you'll be able to see, how your district or school performed, in previous years and on previous assessments. So it's all within that filter tray, whether you're on the assessment dashboard or the district dashboard.

For a teacher, if I'm a teacher and I really wanna know how my students performed last year in, you know, fifth grade math, the best way to see and look at those that student data is to click on the student name and then click on other trackers. Once you open up the individual student report inside the tracker, there is other trackers that you can click on, and it will show all previous trackers. Of course, this will only show if the student was also rostered the previous year through the SIS. Rostering through the SIS creates a record for that student inside MasteryConnect, and so you can see that year over year data. And so for a teacher, they can access it directly inside that tracker.

As a district admin or a school admin and you're looking to find information just for an individual student, you would also follow this because it is the fastest way than trying to drill down a ton from the district level. It's easier just to log in as a teacher who has that student currently and then go back to their archive trackers. And like I said, our, last page is some, different resources, and I will add a couple here about tracker creation like was suggested. But this is our release notes, and our product log that goes over why we are working on what we're working on or any of those new releases and then our product road map. I know that I just shared a handful of new updates that were have been released in the last couple of months, but get excited.

That is not the end. There is quite a few things on the road map currently that will be released, by the end of the quarter, so October first. So get excited for those new updates also. That is what I have, kind of like the basic overview. So please feel free to use this time, to ask questions.

Or if you need me to review anything, I am more than happy to do that. I did have a couple of different questions just came in. Okay. So, somebody just asked, teachers can only view archived data by student. They can't view the previous data by tracker or assessment.

So, unfortunately, no. As a teacher, you can only see data by student because of privacy and permissions. If there is, like, a whole class that moves up together, there is a way to go back and, you know, maybe work with that previous teacher to see that data for the tracker. But there's not a way to pull up all students' data, from the previous year with the students that you currently have, unfortunately. As for an assessment, if you have given an assessment and you wanna see how the students perform, if it's, like, the same assessment that they have taken the year before, you would be able to see that, in the assessment report.

Yes. Scott, if you want that district approved, turned on, yes, you will reach out to your CSM. When that went live last week, they did receive information on how to turn that on, and they can enable that for you. Like I said, if you are any, customer that does purchase our predictive benchmarks, because those are built out and created, by our team and have to follow that very strict standard set, for those state for those predictives. Those were already enabled, for those customers who buy predictives because they have to match those benchmarks that are also purchased.

But, yes, you would reach out to your CSM to have that enabled for you. If you'd if there is no other questions, I know that I did set this, for an hour, but that was kinda just to give, room and time to get through all the materials and any questions. So if you don't have any questions, please feel free to hop off and enjoy the rest of your day. And, hopefully, you have some time to go and watch some of the Olympics. I've definitely been enjoying them, especially, I didn't know that there was something artistic swimming that has actually been really interesting to me, to watch. So, hopefully, that you're enjoying those too and, getting ready for this back to school adventure. Please feel free to keep asking questions if you have any.