Gamifying a course, phase 4: MasteryPaths

I will say this for Canvas, their online chat folks are very helpful...and patient....

Yep....

And willing to spend lots of time with befuddled designers....

I have spent so much time with them during this process that they feel part of the family.

This week's discussion with Chat focused on individualizing student learning  in Canvas.....and using MasteryPath to accomplish this.

I had originally thought I would share an individualized excel spreadsheet with each student, one that details what their individual pathway would be, so imagine my joy to hear that every assignment and every discussion has an option to be assigned to specific students. 

Be still my heart! 

The primary opportunity for individualizing in this course (in this iteration...who know about the next time I teach this course:-) I already have some ideas) involves  the topic's readings.  After students complete their readings (labeled Reading Resources), they are to make an initial post in a discussion forum and respond to a specific number of classmates. Since this course is part of a masters degree program  that emphasizes academic writing, posts need to incorporate peer-reviewed research, so I want to make sure not to penalize those who have content knowledge by forcing them to search for new articles to read.

My method, then is to require everyone read a specific article or chapter, with pre-assessment scores then determining how many of the supplemental readings they need to complete. I then created three separate content pages, labeled 03-Reading Resources, 02-Reading Resources, and 01 Reading Resources....but I could not figure out how to connect them to a path...

Time to IM with Canvas Support....where I learned that only assignments and discussions can become part of a pathway - content pages cannot.

Sigh.....

At least that is an easy fix.  I can copy and paste the readings into 3 separate assignments. NOW when I am editing, I see this option:  Assign to. when i click on it, the names o each student appears, so I can simply select the students who need to access the various Reading Resources.

The trick, here, is that the course has to be published to use MasteryPaths...and, of course, I need scores to determine which readings need to be completed by which students. In getting ready for the course, however, I will simply create all of the possible pages needed, then link up the pathways once I publish the course and have assessment scores.

Thinking ahead to the next version (Mountain View Community College 2.0), I see where I can set up pathways based on assignment scores as well.  For example, if a student earns <90 on an assignment, I could create a pathway taking them to a content page with supplemental information regarding that assignment, then, perhaps if they earn <80, the pathway could lead to an additonal supplemental content page and perhaps a quiz.

Another thought for MVCC 2.0...When I provide assignment choices for a specific topic, perhaps the choices could be worth varying XP. If the student selects Assignment A worth 250 XP and completes  it earning at least 230 points, then the student could move to the next module or stop. If a student chooses a lower value assignment, with perhaps 150 XP and earns 140, then a mastery path could appear that takes that person to a second assignment worth 100XP.  Every student would have to complete 250 XP worth of assignments but would have the choice to do so with one assignment or two. I will need to play with this option later on....

ah...the possibilities... Now,to wait for pre-assessment scores to come in . . .

POST UPDATE (1/20/18):

The course is published, and pre-assessments have arrived, and I have scored them.  Now that I have created some of the MasteryPaths, I wanted to share how the pathway appears to the student.

In this instance, the student earned a high score on the assessment  topics of community college students and community college faculty so their MasteryPath for these two areas takes them through 03-Reading Resources, and they never see the other reading lists.

Completed tasks are automatically checked off, and grades are automatically posted.  Students can easily access their pathway at any point to see their progress, and I have used these pathways to check myself to make sure I have tracked them correctly.

Part of MVCC 2.0 will be to find a way to house and score the pre-assessment in Canvas so I could have the scores more readily available to set up these pathways.  Currently I recorded student names and scores on an index card and use that o create the masterypaths.

SUCCESS!

Next in this journey - using Voki Tour Guides