Glossary

Global Concepts

Content Area

• The highest level of organization in the hierarchy
• Content areas can be thought of as traditional subject areas like English, Math, or Science as well as skill categories such as Leadership, Interpersonal Communication, or Habits of Success

Competency

• The level in the hierarchy below Content Area but above Standard
• This bucket organizes the standards below it into groups and categories for easier navigation, access and reporting

Standard (aka Skill)

• The lowest level of the hierarchy below Competency
• They represent the specific, granular skills that are tracked in the students’ work
• Often correlate to specific Common Core Standards or other standards bodies

Competency Map

• Spreadsheet file that organizes content areas, competencies and standards for upload into the CBL tool
• Organized with each content area on a separate worksheet
• Example of competency map
• Currently, concrete content areas like English and Math have the same year-over-year competencies and standards with the number of demonstrations required remaining the same at all levels. In the future, standards and number of demonstrations will need to be specified by level.

Demonstration

• A project, piece of work or artifact where students show evidence of competence in one or more competencies
• Demonstrations can include a single standard, multiple standards within a single content area or competency, or multiple standards across different content areas and competencies
• The task database extends the demonstration model to support creation up front and assigning

Level (aka Portfolio)

• Students begin each competency on a specific level and progress when the criteria to complete that level has been met
• Some schools use levels roughly equivalent to traditional grade levels while others set the levels based on a scale independent of grade levels (such as Portfolio years)
• Future plans: Introduce the ability to set each students’ starting level for each competency independently

Continua

• The level that each standard is rated on
• Must be developed and defined consistently to ensure consistency across all evaluators (not trivial at all but B21 willingly shares their continua)
• Ranges from 1-12 for Building21’s model
• Example of a continua

Rating

• The term rating is used instead of “grading” when evaluating a demonstration or task

Competency Dashboard

Evidence Requirements

• The number of demonstrations required for a specific standard to progress to the next level
• Set uniquely for each standard in the Competency Map
• Minimum of one is required but no maximum (typically between 2 and 5)

Override

• Allows a teacher to immediately complete all remaining evidence requirements at the current level of a specific standard for a specific student
• One of two ways that a standard can be considered complete
• Not counted in the average score for a given competency

Missed demonstration

• Recorded by selecting the “M” level on the continuum when logging a demonstration
• Logged when a student had the opportunity to demonstrate a standard but did not address it
• Typically occurs when a teacher intends for an assignment to cover specific standards and the student does not address that standard in the assignment

Minimum passing threshold

• Within each competency, the average rating required to progress to the next level
• Currently set globally as X-.5, where X is the current level (e.g. an 8.5 average is required for a level 9 competency)
• In the future, should be able to set this by individual student and competency
• Calculated as the average of all the scores that show on the dashboard in a given competency (ie if low level demonstrations are pushed off because higher ones are logged, they do not count towards the average)

Task Dashboard

Task

• A type of demonstration that is created before the student submits work
• Tasks have additional criteria and data associated such as Due Date, Expiration Date, Assignments, Instructions and Attachments

Due Date

• The date the task is due to be sumitted
• After this date, the task is marked as overdue in the task interface

Expiration Date

• The date a task can no longer be submitted
• When this date arrives, the submit button is deactivated for students
• In order to submit after this date, the teacher must change the Expiration date to a date in the future

Subtask

• A task can be a subtask of another task
• Skills and ratings are kept independently and not rolled up to the parent task
• Only one level of sub tasks is allowed (no sub-sub tasks)

To Do List

• Student created items that are associated with a specific section or a personal list

Portfolio

• A list of all completed and submitted tasks done by a student
• The holistic portfolio view aggregates the Past Tasks of each section into a single page