Allow standards / substandards to be imbedded within larger 'Mastery' habits, in the Learning Mastery Gradebook
We would like to implement standards-based grading (SBG) for all of our honors courses at our grades 6-12 institution. There is also something akin to SBG that we'd like to implement in a non-report-carded course that we implement schoolwide (kind of like a homeroom, but more involved), intended to help builds strong work and collaboration habits in our young scholars. Yet there are two big features missing from the Learning Mastery Gradebook (LMG) that currently make it unsuitable as the tool for doing either of these. One of those BIG missing features is the option to imbed standards / substandards (within the LMG) into larger 'Mastery' standards.
For example, in an honors biology course, the teacher might define four mastery standards: Communicating experimental results as a scientist; Understanding current scientific theories and their context to one another; Recognizing and utilizing biological sciences vocabulary (reading and writing); and Using collaboration, together with other tools, to continually revise and improve work. Each unit throughout the year, the topics, assignment names and tasks might change... but they can all be categorized as fitting into one or more of these 'skills' that a good scientist would develop.
Presently, the LMG allows the creation of numerous (truly, numerous) standards, and mapping them to assignments -- but it doesn't allow them to be mapped into larger 'containers' like the Mastery standards I've seen routinely in use at K-12 institutions that fully utilize standards-based grading. It also doesn't allow sub-averages (on a scale of 1-4) to be computed for each mastery standard (which students ideally would then be able to easily view after clicking on 'View Grades,' then details) -- nor does it allow for an instance of just one of the mastery standards being 'below mastery' to pull the overall grade down to 'below mastery.' That is, the "all or nothing" concept that I've only ever seen SBG successfully used with!
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