MyWays Exercise 1: Fine-Tuning Your Definition of Student Success

Exercise 1

Fine-Tuning Your Definition of Student Success

developed by Dave Lash & Grace Belfiore

for Next Generation Learning Challenges

Andrew Calkins, Deputy Director

September 18, 2015 DRAFT

MyWays is supported by a grant

from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

with additional support from

the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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© 2015 EDUCAUSE

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Putting MyWays to Work

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

This is the first in a series of MyWays exercise packets.

Exercise 1: Fine-Tuning Your Definition of Student Success

Exercise 1a: Defining and Mapping Your Definition of Student Success

Exercise 1b: Creating a Graphical Learning Plan for Student Success

Quick link to the MyWays Beta ToolboxRepository for all MyWays overviews, tools, and exercises.

For a detailed listing of Exercise 1 documents, see the last slide in this deck.

Next Packet: Exercise 2 – Learning Design as Rich as Your Definition of Student Success


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http://nextgenlearning.org/myways


The MyWays model, tools, and reports provide a

useful framework for design thinking & model building.

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The MyWays project is attempting to help grantees and

school designers answer three big questions:

How well are we defining and articulating what success looks like

for students attending our school?

How well does our design for learning and the organization of our

school directly support students' attainment of that richer, deeper

definition of success?

How do we gauge students' progress in developing those

competencies? And: How can we measure and articulate our school’s

overall performance, beyond proficiency in ELA and math?

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The exercises in this packet, 1a and 1b, address the first of these three big

questions—how to define and articulate what student success looks like.

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2

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The MyWays model provides school designers, teachers,

parents, and students with a set of 20 student competencies

needed for success in college, career, and life.

5Putting MyWays to Work

Organized in four arenas, MyWays serves as a rosetta stone

to translate research from across the broad, multi-disciplinary student success landscape.



Here’s how

MyWays

aligns with a

few selected

models from

the student

success

landscape.

See a later slide for

more on capability

and agency.


Drilling deeper. This table provides short definitions for each of the competencies. The

forthcoming MyWays Model report provides deeper discussion of the research for the competencies.

One issue we researched in depth is the

relationship between a person’s internal

behaviors and dispositions, their learning

and skill development, and their confidence

and effectiveness operating in the real world

—operating in the real world being essential

to success in college, career, and life.

The research suggests that competence

is the union of capability and agency as we

have defined those terms here. Additionally,

the behaviors, skills, and dispositions that

comprise agency (as well as capability)

“are local” in the sense that an individual

might be high-agency in one area, say math,

but low-agency in English, social skills, or

developing a personal roadmap to a new

goal. Or vice versa.

Accordingly, a key takeaway from the

research is the importance of developing

agency within specific competencies, rather

than as a separate ability.


Knowledge Skills

Work Study

Practices

Work Study

Practices

Each school or jurisdiction has its own language

and constructs. MyWays is designed to provide a

common frame through which reformers can

connect their work to research and practice

elsewhere. (NH cross-mapped here)


Another feature of MyWays is its emphasis on interoperability

with other frameworks.

Exercises 1a & 1b


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Exercise 1a:

Defining and Mapping Your Definition of Student Success

Exercise 1b:

Creating a Graphical Learning Plan for Student Success

Before delving into the two exercises presented

in this section, we recommend that your design

team members read the Introducing MyWays

overview listed on the last page of this deck.

Discuss it as a group. Seek agreement on what

information will be useful to collect on the

worksheet and spider plots.

This packet is designed to help you begin

working with MyWays and specifically with

the first big question:

How well are we defining and articulating

what success looks like for students

attending our school?

12Exercise 1a. Defining and Mapping Your Definition of Student Success

Exercise 1a.

Like all MyWays tools, this Competency

Correlation Tool is flexible and adaptable to

many purposes. Customize the tool and

exercise to fit your needs!

Here’s Exercise 1a:

Download the Competency Correlation Tool

from the MyWays Beta Toolbox.

Working individually, compare your

school’s model of student success against

the MyWays competencies. (Work on hard

copy, digitally using the Excel template, or

load the template into a Google doc for

collaborative editing.)

Compare worksheets and discuss. Where is

your model strongest? What competencies

do you feel should be strengthened or

added? Come up with a joint analysis and

action plan based on that analysis.


https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hhlvvc92egygfbg/AAAZEP3g_03zMwEEyQXqO3xEa/Worksheet Tool.How we define success for students.xlsx?dl=0

13Exercise 1b. Creating a Graphical Learning Plan for Student Success

“Force visual comparison,” stresses Edward Tufte,

the guru of information visualization. To that end,

MyWays provides two simple spider plot tools: a

detailed plot of all 20 competencies (upper right)

and an arena plot that uses one combined score for

the five competencies in each arena (lower right).

The tools are built in Excel, are easy to use, and

easy to customize. Most importantly, they can be

used to compare almost any two conditions:

contrasting student profiles, the same student at two

points in time, program profiles at schools A and B,

and so forth.

In Exercise 1b, you will use the MyWays

Competency Detail Plotting Tool to generate a

spider plot of an individual student’s current

strengths, needs, and goals across the full set of

MyWays competencies.

First, we demonstrate how this is done.


The case of Tia*

A 14-year-old living in Boston, here’s how Tia (black

line) might be compared to an academically “on-track”

student (red line) using the arena-level plotting tool. Any

scale can be used with the tool; in this case, the student

in red is Performing (‘3’) in the Content Knowledge and

Habits of Success arenas with lower scores in Creative

Know How and Wayfinding Abilities.

Tia’s low-income background and moderate dyslexia

have contributed to her lower Content Knowledge score,

but she is a determined child with several strengths in

other arenas that would typically go unnoticed, or at

least, undeveloped in traditional schools.

On the next page, we’ll look deeper at the individual

competencies in each arena using the more detailed

plotting tool.

First though, note the screenshot of the Excel file (right).

The plot is generated automatically by changes in the

‘Enter Data’ table. Easy-to-follow instructions are

provided right on the same page. Plots can be

customized through simple editing of the spreadsheet.

* Tia is a fictionalized composite of two real students in the Boston area.


In this second plot, we have used a more detailed version of the Excel

tool to show Tia’s current level for all 20 MyWays competencies

(black). That profile shows several peaks which figured significantly

in developing the goals and individual education plan represented by

the purple line.

In addition to her Individualized Education Program focused solely on

her dyslexia, Tia’s teachers and parents have helped Tia establish some

learning activities and goals (purple line)

that will cultivate her strengths and

interests while exploring potential career

pathways.

Examples:

• Providing learning experiences in

and out of school to maximize her

strong Social Skills, Communication

ability, and Practical Life Skills;

• Declaring an “academic major”

around her two great loves—young

children and animals—using two

Content Knowledge platforms:

Science, Social Studies, Arts,

Languages and Career-Related

Technical Skills;

• Translating the determination and

hard work Tia has shown in

overcoming her disability and her

family’s financial struggles, along

with Social Skills and self-

knowledge beyond her years, into

more Positive Mindsets, Academic

Behaviors, and Learning Strategies.


Exercise 1b.

Read and discuss the Introducing MyWays overview.

Download the Competency Detailed Plotting Tool

from the MyWays Beta Toolbox. Read the

instructions within the spreadsheet.

Customize the exercise to fit your current needs.

Consider plotting a student’s current status and

future goals, or modify the exercise to use the tool

for an assessment of your learning program or goals.

Select one of the scales provided within the

instructions, or use another scale of your own

creation.

For purposes of this exercise, enter values for each

competency (left) based on actual data or your

informed experience. Generate plot(s).

Discuss the plots and new insights. Come up with a

joint analysis and action plan based on that analysis.

Watch for forthcoming MyWays reports and practice

briefings for information on learning design and

assessment design pertinent to the competencies.

Use this simple Excel tool, provided in the

Toolbox, to create a spider-chart graphical

expression of an individual student’s current

strengths, needs, and goals across the full set of

MyWays competencies (or replace them with

your own definitions). Or customize this Excel

charting tool as you see fit.


All files associated with these exercises can be found in the MyWays Beta Toolbox.

Related reading

This slide deck

Introducing MyWays overview

Tools

Competency Correlation Tool (for Exercise 1a)

Competency Arena Summary Plotting Tool (for Exercise 1b)

Competency Detailed Plotting Tool (for Exercise 1b)

Forthcoming Reports

The MyWays Model: A Composite of Student Competencies for Success in College, Career, and Life

Foundations of the MyWays Model: A Brief Summary of Student Success Research

MyWays by Design: A Set of Practice Briefings on Learning and Assessment for Broader and Deeper Competencies

Simple Tools for Using MyWays in Your School Community

Resources for Exercises 1a & 1b


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