93 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
93 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
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title = "Mastery-Based Learning"
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date = 2022-07-24
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tags = ["education"]
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A thought I've been brewing probably since undergrad is the idea of
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mastery-based education for skill-based practices. Directly inspired by the
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language learning apps, I wonder whether we can enhance a traditional spaced
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repetition system with a topic graph, where mastery can "spill" throughout the
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graph to better model learning. Since I'm never going to have time to actually
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build such a system, I thought I'd just jot these ideas down.
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### Knowledge Graph
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The first piece of this setup would require having an extensive knowledge graph.
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Think Wikipedia, where it has a lot of related topics, but rather than just
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being linked in an ad-hoc manner, each link has one or more of the following
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specific purposes:
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- **Dependency.** The linked topic needs some percentage of mastery in order
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to best experience the current topic.
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- **Spill.** Not really sure what a good term for this would be, but basically
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mastery of the current topic would result in some percentage of "spilled"
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mastery gain for the linked topic.
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The dependency aspect allows people to work backwards, starting from what they
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don't know and being able to query what the required context is. They can build
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themselves a learning plan based on a topological sorting of those topics and
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tackle them individually.
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The spill aspect allows people to "skip" learning things they already know, for
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a faster onboarding experience. For example, since "the quadratic formula"
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requires someone to know "algebra", then if someone masters the quadratic
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formula before algebra, it should boost the mastery of algebra too.
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### Mastery Level
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I think the current way tests are handled are not only stressful, but a horrible
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way to measure mastery. Rather than promoting long-term learning, it encourages
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the cram-and-forget workflow. I think what the language learning apps taught us
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is not only is it good to repeat things when we get it wrong, it's also good to
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repeat things when we get it right.
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The vision would be something like this:
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1. First, the student learns some material. They take a short quiz immediately,
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and their mastery is boosted by a small percentage depending on their score,
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maybe up to 30%.
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2. Then, the student goes off and learns some related material. After a length
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of time has passed, they are quizzed on the first topic again. By this time,
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their mastery score should fall a bit simply on the basis of "forgetfulness
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over time".
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3. At the end of the semester, if they have reached required thresholds of
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mastery in each required topic, they will pass the class.
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Not only does this simplify final grading, it also removes the whole concept of
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stress in the middle, since doing badly on one exam doesn't hurt your grade
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permanently. On top of that, doing _well_ on a single exam doesn't guarantee
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that you know it, and the system models that by not giving you full mastery
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after a single test.
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But this doesn't necessarily mean that the student must re-take tests on things
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they already know. The great thing about the whole "spill" system is that if
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they learn topic A first, then topic B that depends on topic A, then topic B can
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indirectly keep topic A's mastery afloat.
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### Implementation Challenges
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Implementation is the toughest part. There's a couple technical hurdles I would
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like to complete before attempting such a system, which are:
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- A bunch of interactive widgets for allowing users to play around with the
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material directly. This is more applicable in math and science curriculums.
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- Quiz generation software. There's probably good off-the-shelf components
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already, I haven't looked.
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Another problem is that I never want to think about dealing with cheating. If
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this idea were to be neatly packaged up and deployed into schools, you bet the
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first problem teachers are going to have is with cheating. While there are some
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stopgaps such as auto-generated quizzes and personalized curriculums, there's
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never a guaranteed solution. Instead, fostering a healthy learning attitude
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among students is the best way for these systems to be effective.
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My final disclaimer is that I'm not an educator. I've TA'd for a functional
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programming course in undergrad and helped many peers learn programming concepts
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from time to time. Watching people learn is a very interesting process, and
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while I don't have time to conduct studies on how this process works, there's
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general patterns I picked up on while following this train of thought.
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