My experience in using this approach to instructional design includes the individual student, classroom, and school-wide levels. I am sharing this to help you know the background from which I am presenting these ideas and some examples of how well this approach can work.

Individual

As a parent, I was able to use these concepts to help my daughter who had been placed in remediation courses in first grade. By thee third grade, she was reading at a high school to college level, and by 14 she began college, earning her first degree before she could drive.

Working with individual parents and directly with their children, there were several other success stories like this one. I have worked with parents who were homeschooling, and those who needed help supplementing or navigating their child's public school education.

Class

My middle school students experienced learning gains between 10 and 30 percentile points on average, depending on the subcategory. This average was higher when you removed my two sections of honors (who were starting out with high enough scores that their learning gains were not able to be fully measured). For all six sections, I created a blended option for my otherwise site-based classes. Since I had about 240 students, the technology facilitated the process of creating this mastery-based approach.

In another example, I was teaching a college English writing course that required students to pass a college-administered (and graded) exam in order to pass the course. I and one other instructor had the highest pass rates. We were both using this method.

This instructor and I worked together again, this time at a high school where we used this approach to help "at risk" students successfully graduate and transition into either college or successful careers. Some of my students were quickly making a higher wage than I did as a teacher! (Yes, this says as much about the teacher pay as it does my students' success.)

School

I helped create and develop schools (public and private) that helped students move from "failing" to success, while developing a love for learning in the process. A school I designed, which used a very personalized version of this approach, had students scoring high on SAT and other tests, and gaining entrance into "Ivy League" colleges, if that was the path they wished to take. It also nurtured students who were on other paths, some of them owning their own businesses, or busy making movies, or being world-renowned athletes, and so on. This school was later spotlighted in a publication by iNacol, and referred to by conference speakers that year as a model program for personalized learning.

K12 and College; Face-to-Face and Online

My experience in applying this approach ranges from kindergarten through college. However, most of my experience is teaching at the 6th grade through college undergraduate levels, where I have taught every grade, both face-to-face and online.

I know the challenges and joys of both face-to-face and online teaching, including the work involved in transitioning from one to the other.

The Whole Recipe

Everything included in this class is necessary in order to create the types of successes above. People often ask me what the "one" thing is that they should do or have, and it really is a recipe of several items working together. It weaves in an underlying philosophy, and even the less-obvious sections such as "Time and Space" are important when designing for student success.

The above is just a sampling of examples of how I have used the ideas and strategies presented in this class. I have often been asked to train others in this—beyond the personal mentoring I have done in the past. This is my attempt at this here.

My initial teacher training gave me a unique foundation in creating personalized and mastery-based education. I have built upon that over the years by engaging in additional training—especially instructional design for online learning. Beyond this, it was the time spent in the classroom—seeing what worked (and what didn't!)—that further developed my abilities.

While I can't throw everything I have learned at you all at once, I hope that this class provides a solid foundation for you to be successful with creating mastery-based learning experiences in online and/or blended classes. If you are also teaching the course, I hope that the class also helps you create a work-life balance that took me a long time to figure out. We intend for technology to facilitate our work, but sometimes it adds more to our plate; be mindful of this and take steps to counter it.

As you work through the class, please reach out through the Contact form to let me know if anything needs to be more clear, and definitely let me know if you see an error or a broken link! I am also grateful for any suggested resources to add.

Respectfully,