Change Mastery Settings

From TeacherWiki

How do I change the mastery settings on a problem set?

Mastery Learning problem sets have several settings associated with them that control when the student is finished with the assignment. They are:

• Prior Knowledge: If this is not set to 0, and if the student gets the first X problems in a row correct, they will test out of the problem set, where X is the prior knowledge setting. This number is usually set lower than the Mastery Limit in order to allow students to demonstrate right away that they already know the material. However, if the student does not get the first X problems in a row correct, they must then get Y right in a row, where Y is the Mastery Limit.
• Mastery Limit: This is how many problems the student must get correct in a row in order to test out of the problem set.
• First Day Limit: This is how many problems the student is allowed to do on the first day without mastering the problem set until he or she is told by the system to come back the next day. This is to prevent students from burning out, as well as encourage them to seek help from their teachers and peers.
• Subsequent Day Limit: This serves the same purpose as the first day limit, but allows for a different setting for days after the first in case there is a desire for them to be different.

All Mastery Learning modules created prior to Oct 2009 have the following default settings:

Prior Knowledge: 1 or 2
Mastery Limit: 3
First Day Limit: 5
Subsequenct Day Limit: 7

Many teachers take issue with the Prior Knowledge setting, believing that getting the first problem right and testing out does not demonstrate prior mastery of a particular skill, but rather often demonstrates that the student is lucky or good at asking their peers for the answer. Because of this, the ASSISTment team changed the default settings in October-ish so that all Mastery modules made afterward would have a Prior Knowledge setting of 3. The problem remains though that most of the WPI content was created prior to October, and changing this setting on those sets is not trivial. Many teachers have asked us how to get around this, which is why we created this wiki page.

The fundamental problem is that these mastery settings are associated with the problem sets themselves, and these sets were made by WPI. The system will only let teachers modify their own content, and so the only way to change the settings on the WPI modules is to make a copy, change the settings, and assign the copy to your class instead of the original. Making a copy is easy enough--you simply click on the Build tab (make sure you are in the Problem Sets sub-tab), and in the textbox labeled Quick Actions, enter the ID of the problem set you want to copy and click New Copy.

Once you have a new copy, you can change the settings at the top of the Edit page:

Click Save Variables, and make note of the ID number of the copy you just made (if you can't find it, it is always in the URL in your browser, for example http://assistment.org/build/sequence/show/1234). You will need to assign this ID number to your class, not the original, if you want to use your new settings.