Introduction
One of Dash's key features is the "My Required Learning" page where students find their daily learning recommendations. Each recommendation has a source that helps you understand where it came from and why it's important for your learning journey.
Contents
Types of Recommendation Sources
Skill Plan
These are the most common recommendations. They represent the essential skills from pre-approved subject plans designed for each grade level.
Why It Matters
Following a skill plan ensures that students receive a well-rounded education, covering all the necessary topics and skills in each subject. These plans are designed with input from respected sources in the educational spectrum and revised by our Academics team.
Academics Testing
These contain assigned tests for your learning time. Completing a test recommendation as soon as possible is important since the results help shape your future learning path.
Why It Matters
These tests adapt to a student's skill level and provide insights into their learning strengths and weaknesses. This helps tailor the recommendations to areas where they can either improve or excel as well as help the academics team to roster students appropriately.
Knowledge Gap
These recommendations address specific areas that our academic team has identified as gaps in the training plans. They're carefully selected to ensure comprehensive coverage of important educational concepts.
There's a catch: If you have completed them before, they will not count again as mastered levels automatically. Make sure to learn your skills very well the first time so this doesn't happen, but rest assured that your guides are empowered to track this manually and determine appropriate rewards based on completion data.
Also, some Knowledge Gap recommendations might appear as "Knowledge Gap Overrides" - which means they've been marked as high priority by our academic team.
<supportagent>
Be aware that Guides may refer to them as "scaffolding skills" although this is not the official term.
You'll see this source for recommendations added through these methods:
For details on manual rewards, see this article: Knowledge Gap Tracker: Overview and Purpose.
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Supporting Skills
These recommendations are additional skills identified by our academic experts as foundational building blocks that might help when students are finding a Skill Plan lesson challenging. While not essential for all students (which is why they're not part of the main Skill Plan), these "scaffolding skills" can provide extra support when needed.
There are two ways to get Supporting Skills recommendations:
- Students can request them directly using the "I'm Stuck" Button
- They appear automatically when the system identifies a student is struggling with a skill
The system considers a student to be struggling when all these conditions are met:
- Work on a skill for at least 2 consecutive sessions
- These sessions are free from antipatterns (APs)
- Time spent across these consecutive sessions is at least 50 minutes
- No Edulastic test on any of the days corresponding to these sessions
- The student hasn't achieved mastery of the skill
Why It Matters
These foundational skills can make learning easier by breaking down complex concepts into smaller, more manageable steps. Think of them as building blocks that help create a stronger understanding of the main skill you're trying to master.
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Important notes:
- Not all lessons have Supporting Skills - if none exist, no recommendations will be added when a student meets the struggling criteria
- See Understanding the Skill Plan to check which Supporting Skills are available for each skill
- If Supporting Skills aren't appearing when they should, escalate to the Learning Team
- For students still struggling after mastering Supporting Skills (or when none are available), consult the Academics Deep Dive runbook
- If students haven't mastered available Supporting Skills yet claim to be struggling, direct them to use the "I'm Stuck" button
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Academics Override
Sometimes, the Academics team manually assigns additional recommendations when they identify quick opportunities to enhance your learning experience.
Why It Matters
These manual recommendations ensure your learning path adapts to your specific needs while maintaining alignment with curriculum goals.
<supportagent>
You'll see this source for recommendations added through this method: How to Add Personalized Skills via the Skills Override App.
While the Academics team will generally Add or Remove Skills via the Manual Suggestions Sheet, which changes the source to "Knowledge Gap" since these are permanent, overrides are removed once the recommendation engine runs again (and this happens multiple times a day).
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App Roster
These recommendations connect you to learning apps where individual lessons can't be directly linked. Instead of taking you straight to a specific lesson, these will take you to the app itself where you should be able to locate your assigned work.
Why It Matters
While we can't provide direct links to specific lessons for some apps, they're still valuable parts of your learning journey, and keeping them in your recommendations helps you stay organized.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Do different sources require different approaches? No, approach all recommendations with the same dedication, and always do your best!
- Why do some apps just take me to their homepage? Some learning platforms don't allow direct links to specific lessons, so you'll need to navigate to your assignments once inside the app.
- How quickly should I complete test recommendations? Complete these as soon as possible since they help shape your future learning path.
Conclusion
Understanding recommendation sources helps you better navigate your learning journey. While the sources vary, your approach should remain consistent: engage actively with each lesson and focus on thorough understanding. If you have questions, your Guide or Support team is ready to help.
Karina Jimenez Marin
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