Khan Academy’s mission is to offer a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. In order to move toward this mission, the Khan Academy team has been working on a new system to track a user's learning progress in all courses, on all devices, and over time in many languages. We call this the Mastery System and it has been in development and testing for nearly a year.
We've recently made some adjustments to our new Mastery system, which you can read about in this announcement. And read on for more information about this new experience!
Course Mastery
The course page will now show:
- The overall fraction of mastery points for that course that you have achieved.
- The percentage of the course that has you have mastered.
- Your course mastery level (see Mastery Levels below for more information).
Courses will also have a Course Challenge Card at the bottom where you can take an assessment that is almost identical to a Unit test, but that covers a sampling of skills from the entire course instead.
Note: While the Course Challenge can help learners achieve Course Mastery, the Course Challenge can't be assigned.
Unit Mastery
The Unit page also has several new elements, which are labeled in the image above:
- The total Mastery Points available in this unit (for example, 1200 points on this unit--100 for each skill in the unit)
- A colorful bar across the top that tracks your progress through Levels 1 - 6.
- A left-hand column that contains the Skill Summary, which enables you to see your progress on each skill.
- Under Practice you can also see your progress from Familiar to Proficient to Mastered on each skill.
Skills
Each skill is worth a total of 100 Mastery Points. As you practice skills and answer questions in Quizzes and Unit tests, your level for that skill will go up (or down, if you miss questions in a Quiz or Unit test). Moving to Familiar will earn you 50 of the 100 points. Leveling up to Proficient will get you to 80 points. Become Mastered in a skill to collect the total 100 available Mastery Points
Skill Levels in the new Mastery System
Khan Academy’s new mastery system levels show where your students stand based on their performance on exercises, quizzes, unit tests, and course challenges. Students are promoted or demoted based on their performance, and most promotions or demotions are a simple move from the student’s current level to the next higher or lower level. Because one concept of mastery learning is understanding a skill in any context, some promotions require students to answer questions correctly on a quiz, unit test, or course challenge in order to move forward.
General Movement
In general, students can move up one level from Not Started or Attempted to Familiar by scoring between 70% and 85% on an exercise, or by answering all of the questions about the skill right on a quiz, test, or challenge. To get to Proficient, students must start at Familiar and get all of the questions about a skill right in an exercise, quiz, test, or challenge. To get to Mastered, students must begin at Proficient and get all of the questions about the skill right on a Unit Test or Course Challenge.
Special Case Movements
There are also special instances where students may be promoted or demoted two levels. If students score 100% on an exercise, quiz, test, or challenge the first time that they attempt a skill, they can be moved up two levels to Proficient. They can also be moved two levels from Attempted (see below) to Proficient in a skill if they achieve a perfect score on an exercise. Conversely, students who have achieved mastery of a skill can be demoted two levels to Familiar if they score lower than 70% on an exercise.
New State: Attempted
Another change with the new mastery system is the Attempted level. This level indicates that students may be struggling with a skill. Students may fall into this category if their first attempt at a skill on an exercise, quiz, test, or challenge is lower than 70%, or if they had previously made it to the Familiar level, but then scored lower than 70% on an exercise or missed all of the questions about that skill on a quiz, test, or challenge.
Can you lose points or skill levels, and how does that work?
See the above descriptions for how learners can move down levels in the new system.
Mastery Progress Levels
Unit mastery levels are based on the percentage completion in the unit.
- At Level 1 you have completed less than 25%
- Level 2 indicates between 25% and 49% completion.
- Level 3 indicates between 50% and 74% completion.
- Level 4 indicates between 75% and 89% completion.
- Level 5 (which is considered Mastery) indicates 90% to 99% completion.
- You reach Level 6 when you reach 100% completion!
How does this connect to Missions mastery?
With Khan Academy missions, you also practice a skill multiple times in order to master the skill. The new Unit Mastery progress corresponds to your progress in a Mission.
In the Missions system, a skill that is Practiced or Level One will appear as Familiar in Unit Mastery.
Mastery is not easily earned, and that’s intentional. But putting in the work to achieve it will prove you’ve earned (and learned!) it. We hope those of you in the new Mastery system will enjoy leveling up your skills and reaching 100% Course and Unit Mastery.