Students Reflect on Using the MasteryBook

By Jordana Benone, high school teacher and MasteryBook User

In advance of their grading conferences at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, Portal students were asked to reflect on a number of questions about their learning.  One of the questions was, “How did your understanding of your learning change once we started to use MasteryBook? What did you do differently once you had MasteryBook as a tool?”  Below are the responses. I added the bolding as I found it to be the most relevant part of understanding how this is a useful tool for the students.

• My understanding of my learning changed once we started to use MasteryBook because I finally understood the competency-based learning and it helped me focus on improving the competencies I needed to work on. Once I had MasteryBook as a tool, I started focusing on the specific competency or competencies I need to grow on and improve on more.

• After using MasteryBook, I had a stronger understanding of our competencies and why we did assignments. I was able to quickly understand what I understood and what I needed to work on which saved a lot of time. Although it gave us an overall rating I mainly focused on what specific competencies on assignments I needed to work on. 

• My understanding of learning changed once we started to use MasteryBook because I now understood that grades were based on our ability to apply certain competencies or not. Once I had MasteryBook as a tool I started looking at the assignments certain competencies were attached to in order to improve my rating on them. I also used it to write about my ability to write informative texts and my ability to do other things.

• My understanding of my learning changed when using MasteryBook because I could relate the colors of the grade back to my grade. This relationship helped me push to revise some more work I knew I needed to work on but didn’t fully understand the importance of. This is something I did not do as much before we used MasteryBook because I thought that getting better grades on current assignments would get my grades up.  Because of this, I feel that MasteryBook gave me better insight into my grade as a whole, and how to better the quality of my previous and current work.  I used that to my advantage by revising more work in classes I knew needed it.  

• My knowledge of my learning changed once we started to use MasteryBook because I was able to see my overall skills within each competency in the assignment posted. I started to check my skill ratings on my competencies more often than checking Google Classroom. 

• What I understand differently is that it is based on recent assignments. Once I learned more about MasteryBook it has helped me check the competencies and for me to look at how I am doing and what I need to revise based on the color and the competency. 

• Once I started using MasteryBook I realized that my most recent work affected the bar that showed my overall rating. However, this bar doesn’t determine my actual grade, but instead, it is the actual competencies that determine my grade. For example, the more important competencies such as reading critically mean a lot to my grade, and the more I show that I can master this competency the better. This can also mean that there can be assignments where it was a rare occurrence for me not to be proficient, and this can make my bar on MasteryBook look like I haven’t been good at evaluating main ideas or themes all year. 

• My understanding of my learning changed when we started to use MasteryBook because I was able to physically see the skills I needed to improve on rather than guessing and making assumptions. I was also able to see how each assignment affects my grade differently and it was clearer to see the major vs minor competencies. Once I had MasteryBook as a tool, I started to improve on how I should improve certain assignments rather than just completing countless revisions without a clear direction. Being aware of the competencies that needed improvement, I was able to focus and think about how to better them when completing assignments. 

• My understanding of learning changed when we started to use MasteryBook because I had to learn how to prioritize my work. MasteryBook showed me what assignments I had to redo, and what assignments I had missed. It was also useful to see how I was doing in class. I did a lot differently when I first saw my grade in the class because I knew something had to change. It was overall very useful because it made revisions, pacing, and prioritizing a lot easier because it kept track of my work for me.

• My understanding of my learning changed once we started using MasteryBook, since I started to see which competencies I needed to improve on. I also had an overall rating on my summary bar and it helped me to prioritize work and what things I needed to improve upon. When we started using MasteryBook, I started revising my work much more and checking my summary bar every day. 

• My understanding of my learning changed once we started to use MasteryBook by giving me an overview of where I am. I can go back and look at each individual competency which helps a lot when needing to know the progress I’m making as a student. So overall my learning has benefited in terms of knowing where I am.

Given the student feedback about using the MasteryBook, how do you think your students would respond? We’d love to know – sign up for a call with one of our experts to help get you started.