Example of Student Doing a Mastery Assignment.
Introduction to Maple T.A. Mastery Assignments
This document presents an example of a student working through a Maple T.A. Mastery assignment to
demonstrate both the flow of the assignment and its utility to support student mastery. The mastery
assignment is composed of questions or questions groups. When individual questions are used, the
student will be repeatedly given that question until they have gotten it correct (i.e. mastered it); use of
individual questions in Mastery Assignments does not make much sense unless the question is
algorithmically generated so that the student is actually answering a different (but similar question) each
time it is asked. A Question Group is a set of questions that assess a common skill or topic, but have
different wording, numeric values or real world applications. Questions in a group can also be
algorithmically generated giving question groups a large degree of variability. In a mastery assignment,
Maple T.A. will randomly draw questions from a group unit a preset number of those questions have been
answered correctly. For example, a question group chosen to test understanding of density may be
composed of questions that require the student to calculate mass, volume or density given the other two
variables; may involve liquid, gas or solid samples composed of different substances or mixtures and
may have volumes determined directly (i.e. with a graduated cylinder), from dimensions (length, width,
radius, etc.) or determined by difference (irregular objects). Question group may be set up by selecting 10
different density questions. The assignment designer would select the questions from the list provided
(see example figure below).
The assignment designer can type in a Group Name (see box) and the hit the “Add as Group” box. The
Question Group appears in an assignment question list (below) to the right of the available questions list
(see below).
This is identified as item one in the assignment. The line starting “Randomly pick . . .“ indicates that this
is a Question Group: if a single question had been selected only the first line would appear (see below).
After “Randomly pick” is a drop down box menu that allows the assignment designer to select the
number of questions in the group that must be answer correctly. Changing that number to 5 in a Mastery
Assignment would mean that a student would have to answer 5 of these questions correctly in order to
complete the assignment. By doing so, a student is assumed to have reached an acceptable level of
mastery. The “+” and “-“ boxes allow the number of points rewarded for a correctly answered question to
be changed. “Total Points” is the total number of points that can be gained for the entire assignment and
“Total # Questions” is the number of questions that must be answered correctly for the assignment to be
considered completed. Mastery assignments can be graded so that a student completing the assignment
gets full credit, regardless of how many wrong answers they made along the way. This encourages
students to keep working until they have “mastered” the assignment material.
Actual Example of Student Doing a Mastery Assignment
Top of Typical Course Page.
Visible Assignments are listed. Available assignments are shown in Blue. Generally, once an assignment
was made available in the ASU General Chemistry Redesigned Course, it was set to unlimited end date so
that students could use it for practice whenever they needed it.
Note the fourth “assignment” is unavailable with an end date set before the start of the semester. This is a
dummy assignment that is being used as a “section header” to give more organization to the assignment
list. Because of the large number of drills, pretests and assignments1 used in the course, this added
organization was needed to facilitate quick location of assignments by students. This is the work-around
that we came up with as Maple T.A. does not provide any means of organizing the assignment list other
than question order.
Further down on the list is the assignment selected by the student for this example . . .
1
Drills and pretests are used in the Skill Gateways. Assignments are associated directly with the lecture.
This is the Assignment View of the first question. In later examples we will be showing the question only
to minimize the length of this document. However, the student will have this view whenever they are
viewing a question in Mastery Mode.
The student selects the correct answer by clicking on the appropriate radio button.
Then the student checks to see whether or not the answer was correct by clicking “Grade”
In mastery mode, “Grade” means click the current question. The result is shown below.
The above figure shows the full answer response window. When question feedback is shown in the
remainder of this document, only the area inside the highlighted box will be shown.
The answer response is at the right. In this case the student answered correctly. Additional comments or
question feedback is given under “Comment:”. The comment ideally would give sufficient information
for a student missing the assignment to figure out what is required similar questions right. Remember in
the mastery assignment, students who get a question wrong will continue to be given similar questions
until they get the specified number correct.
This question does not have a comment. An appropriate comment for the question would have been . . .
The figure below indicates where metals are found on the periodic table. You should be able to locate the
locations of nonmetals without any help. Confirm that Co is in the indicated region.
Figures have to be kept to a limited size, because Maple T.A. We plan on adding comments of this sort to
these questions as we maintain and improve the ASU written question banks.
On the left, is a progress sheet that lists each of the questions or question groups in the assignment. The
dark green bar to the right of question 2 indicates that question group has been answered correctly the
required number of times. The “1/1” to the right of the green bar indicates that 1 question has been
answered correctly out of 1 required. A “1/3” would indicate that 1 question has been answered correctly
out of 3 required questions; in this situation (partial completion of a question group requirement) a light
green bar would have been shown indicating partial completion of the required number of correct answers
for that group. A yellow bar indicates that the question type has be answered one or more times without
any correct responses. No bar indicates that no questions from that group have been asked (or answered)
yet. If there is no bar, a yellow bar or a light green bar the student will be asked additional question from
that question or question group.
IMPORTANT
It is important at this point that students do not select “Finish Session” unless all topics show a green bar
next to them: when pushed, Maple T.A. assumes that the student is finished working on the assignment
and grades it based on what has been completed. Quitting before all items have dark green bars is the
equivalent of giving up. If the student wishes to quit Maple T.A. and resume the assignment later, they
should hit : “Quit and Save”.
To continue answering more questions, the student should select “Next”.
The next question that appears in this session is shown on the top of the next page. This is one of the
questions from item 10 and was provided by Prentice Hall ca. 2004 as part of the PHGA
Note that the question has a hint. If the student clicks on “Hint 1”, they get the following in a pop-up
window:
The section reference in this hint refers to an out of Print version of a different textbook2 than was used
for the course redesign. Material of this sort will be shown for example in this report. Questions from
PHGA questions banks are copyrighted materials and cannot be provided by ASU or THECB for others
to use.
To illustrate answer specific feedback that is available for multiple choice questions in Maple T. A., and
incorrect answer was selected
The Maple T.A. response obtained by clicking “Grade” is shown below:
Note that the feedback contains the student’s answer, the correct answer and a comment aimed at helping
the student understand what was done wrong. Note that the comment specifically addresses the wrong
answer selected by the student. A different wrong answer would have resulted in a different comment.
2
Chemistry, 4th Edition, John McMurry and Robert C. Fay, 2004, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Also note the yellow bar to the right of the Topic 10 title indicating that the question has been attempted
and all attempts (in this case only one) made have been wrong.
The student would click on “Next” at this point to get the next question.
Again, an incorrect answer is given to illustrate what would happen. Clicking “Grade” gives
Notice even when “Comments” are not available, students can be given feedback in the form of the
correct answer. Whether hints, correct answers or comments are displayed are all instructor controllable.
In the ASU General Chemistry Course Redesign, the goal was to make these tools available for
independent student learning and so these features were all routinely turned on. To make this approach
effective a large number of algorithmically generated questions need to be used. Maple T. A. has the
advantage of having both algorithmically generated questions and the ability to randomly select questions
from a set of ideally equivalent questions. This combination results in the ability to generate assignments
that can be take multiple times and appear almost totally (or totally) unique.
A little later on the student sees the following after answering a question:
Note that question 5 is still showing a yellow bar, indicating that it has been answered, but not correctly
yet. The question happens to be from Question 5.
It happens to be the same question that was asked earlier: He. However, it could have easily asked about
H, C, N, O or F. When answered correctly (nonmetal), the following feedback is given:
Note that the yellow bar after Topic 5 has changed to dark green.
Again, a little later on the student has gotten to the following point:
Notice that more of the topics have green bars. Also notice that Question 1 (a true/false question) has yet
to be asked. The next question is
(Scandium is a metal)
The feedback for answering this question is
Some time later . . .
The student still has not answered a question from Topic 10 correctly, but now gets a Topic 10 question.
Notice that it is a different question. Again this is a PHGA database question. The feedback gives:
Finally after answering one last question correct, the student gets the following feedback.
Note that the green bar from top to bottom and the “100% Progress to mastery” indicate that the student
has completed the assignment. Also note that the “Next” option is no longer available. The student can
now click on “Finish Session” to get full credit for the assignment. The approach that we have taken
with mastery assignments is that as long as the students works to this point, full-credit is given. The hope
is to give the students an added incentive to doing the drills because it is a guaranteed grade.
Clicking “Finish Session” gives the following:
Clicking “View Details” gives a detailed accounting of the student’s work. A partial example of the
output is given below. Records of this sort can be pulled up for review by the student or faculty member
at any time and can be used for reviewing purposes by the student or to help identify student difficulties
by the instructor.