The MyWays Success Framework: Student Competencies for Learning, Work, and Life

The MyWays Success Framework
Student Competencies for Learning, Work, and Life
developed by Dave Lash & Dr. Grace Belfiore
with Next Generation Learning Challenges
The MyWays Project draws on research across the broad
“student success” landscape to provide a composite framework applicable to
all students regardless of academic aptitude or socioeconomic circumstance,
including those students who must overcome the extraordinary challenges of
intergenerational poverty and racial discrimination.
The Success Framework lies at the center of the MyWays Project.
April 2017

Putting MyWays to Work
The MyWays Project offers research, tools, and reports that
provide a framework to help educators redesign the goals and
central learning paradigm of their schools.
2
Brooklyn LAB Charter School, Oct 2015

MyWays is designed to help NGLC grantees and other
school designers answer four big questions:
WHY the urgency to change? What are the real-world conditions
that our students will need to address? (Analysis and envisioning)
How well are we defining and articulating what success looks like
for students attending our school? (Curriculum or learning goals)
How well does our design for learning and the organization of our
school directly support students' attainment of that richer, deeper
definition of success? (Instruction and school organization)
How do we gauge students' progress in developing those
competencies? And: How can we measure and articulate our school’s
overall performance, beyond proficiency in ELA and math?
(Assessment and evaluation)
3

This beta-version PowerPoint deck provides a fairly concise
description of the MyWays tools and their use, to help
educators answer questions 2-4. More detailed information and
tools relating to question 1 will be forthcoming throughout the
Spring of 2017 at http://myways.nextgenlearning.org and in the
main report of the MyWays Project.
4

Putting MyWays to Work / Q.2 – Redefining Success
The MyWays tools for Question 2:
How well are we defining and articulating what success
looks like for students attending our school? (Curriculum)
5
MyWays offers exercises and other tools to help school design and
leadership teams put a practical, research-based lens on their models across
all three of these questions. (Tools for Question 1 are forthcoming.)

One issue we researched in depth is the
relationship between a person’s internal
behaviors and dispositions, their learning
and skill development, and their confidence
and effectiveness operating in the real world
—operating in the real world being essential
to success in college, career, and life.
The research suggests that competence
is the union of capability and agency as we
have defined those terms here. Additionally,
the behaviors, skills, and dispositions that
comprise agency (as well as capability)
“are local” in the sense that an individual
might be high-agency in one area, say math,
but low-agency in English, social skills, or
developing a personal roadmap to a new
goal. Or vice versa.
Accordingly, a key takeaway from the
research is the importance of developing
agency within specific competencies, rather
than as a separate ability.
6Redefining Success – The Concepts

Organized in four domains, MyWays serves as a rosetta stone to
translate research from across the broad, multi-disciplinary student
success landscape to understand what is important for students to
learn.

The 20 MyWays
Competencies
The MyWays model provides
school designers, teachers,
parents, and students with a set
of 20 student competencies
needed for success in college,
career, and life.

Drilling deeper. This table provides short definitions for each of the competencies. The
MyWays Success Framework report provides deeper discussion of the research for the
competencies.

Here’s how
MyWays
aligns with a
few selected
models from
the student
success
landscape.

Knowledge Skills
Work Study
Practices
Work Study
Practices
Each school or jurisdiction has its own language
and constructs. MyWays is designed to provide a
common frame through which reformers can
connect their work to research and practice
elsewhere.
This graphic shows how the
state of New Hampshire is
mapping MyWays with its own
framework of Work Study
Practices.
Another feature of MyWays is its emphasis on interoperability
with other frameworks.

Educators can use MyWays to Map Students’ Current
(black) and Future (red) Competencies
A way to visually depict any student’s
personalized learning plan: a graphical IEP

Exercise 1a Introduction
Fine-Tuning Your Definition of Student Success
13
This Exercise packet is designed to help you begin working with MyWays by addressing the first
big question, which addresses what is important for students to learn:
How well are we defining and articulating what success looks like for our students?
The purpose of Exercise 1a is to help your
team compare your current definition of
student success (your goals for your
students) with the MyWays categories of
student success – to help you think about
whether you may be overlooking some
important kinds of competencies, or even
perhaps still emphasizing some that are no
longer important for your students’ success.
Exercise 1a:
Defining and Mapping Your Definition of Student Success

Exercise 1b Introduction
14
Exercise 1b:
Creating a Graphical Learning Plan for Student Success
Before delving into the two exercises presented in this section, we recommend that your design
team members read the MyWays Model Overview listed on the last page of this deck. Discuss it
as a group. Seek agreement on what information will be useful to collect on the worksheet and
whole-student competency plots.
After your team has updated your curriculum
goals in Exercise 1a, Exercise 1b helps your
teachers to use the MyWays Competency
Plotting Tool to graphically plot each indi-
vidual student’s current strengths, needs, and
goals across your full set of competencies.
This is a powerful tool for guiding the
development of a personal learning plan for
each student.

15Exercise 1a. Defining and Mapping Your Definition of Student Success
Exercise 1a.
Like all MyWays tools, this Competency
Correlation Tool is flexible and adaptable to
many purposes. Customize the tool and
exercise to fit your needs!
Here’s Exercise 1a:
Download the Competency Correlation Tool
from the Toolbox.
Working individually, compare your
school’s model of student success against
the MyWays competencies. (Work on hard
copy, digitally using the Excel template, or
load the template into a Google doc for
collaborative editing.)
Compare worksheets and discuss. Where is
your model strongest? What competencies
do you feel should be strengthened or
added? Come up with a joint analysis and
action plan based on that analysis.

16Exercise 1b. Creating a Graphical Learning Plan for Student Success
“Force visual comparison,” stresses Edward Tufte,
the guru of information visualization. To that end,
MyWays provides two simple whole-student
competency plot tools: a detailed plot of all 20
competencies (upper right) and a simpler domain
plot that uses one combined score for the five
competencies in each domain (lower right).
The tools are built in Excel, are easy to use, and
easy to customize. Most importantly, they can be
used to compare almost any two conditions:
contrasting student profiles, the same student at two
points in time, program profiles at schools A and B,
and so forth.
In Exercise 1b, you will use the MyWays
Competency Detail Plotting Tool to generate a
competency plot of an individual student’s current
strengths, needs, and goals across the full set of
MyWays competencies.
Next, we demonstrate how this is done.

The case of Tia*
A 14-year-old living in Boston, here’s how Tia (black
line) might be compared to an academically “on-track”
student (red line) using the domain-level plotting tool.
Any scale can be used with the tool; in this case, the
student in red is Performing (‘3’) in the Content
Knowledge and Habits of Success domains with lower
scores in Creative Know How and Wayfinding Abilities.
Tia’s low-income background and moderate dyslexia
have contributed to her lower Content Knowledge score,
but she is a determined child with several strengths in
other domains that would typically go unnoticed, or at
least, undeveloped in traditional schools.
On the next page, we’ll look deeper at the individual
competencies in each domain using the more detailed
plotting tool.
First though, note the screenshot of the Excel file (right).
The plot is generated automatically by changes in the
‘Enter Data’ table. Easy-to-follow instructions are
provided right on the same page. Plots can be
customized through simple editing of the spreadsheet.
* Tia is a fictionalized composite of two real students in the
Boston area.

In this second plot, we have used a more detailed version of the Excel
tool to show Tia’s current level for all 20 MyWays competencies
(black). That profile shows several peaks which figured significantly
in developing the goals and individual education plan represented by
the purple line.
In addition to her Individualized Education Program focused solely on
her dyslexia, Tia’s teachers and parents have helped Tia establish some
learning activities and goals (purple line)
that will cultivate her strengths and
interests while exploring potential career
pathways.
Examples:
• Providing learning experiences in
and out of school to maximize her
strong Social Skills, Communication
ability, and Practical Life Skills;
• Declaring an “academic major”
around her two great loves—young
children and animals—using two
Content Knowledge platforms:
Science, Social Studies, Arts,
Languages and Career-Related
Technical Skills;
• Translating the determination and
hard work Tia has shown in
overcoming her disability and her
family’s financial struggles, along
with Social Skills and self-
knowledge beyond her years, into
more Positive Mindsets, Academic
Behaviors, and Learning Strategies.

Exercise 1b.
Read and discuss the MyWays Model Overview.
Download the Competency Detailed Plotting Tool
from the Toolbox. Read the instructions within the
spreadsheet.
Customize the exercise to fit your current needs.
Consider plotting a student’s current status and
future goals, or modify the exercise to use the tool
for an assessment of your learning program or goals.
Select one of the scales provided within the
instructions, or use another scale of your own
creation.
For purposes of this exercise, enter values for each
competency (left) based on actual data or your
informed experience. Generate plot(s).
Discuss the plots and new insights. Come up with a
joint analysis and action plan based on that analysis.
Watch for forthcoming MyWays reports and practice
briefings for information on learning design and
assessment design pertinent to the competencies.
Use this simple Excel tool, provided in the
Toolbox, to create a competency-chart graphical
expression of an individual student’s current
strengths, needs, and goals across the full set of
MyWays competencies (or replace them with
your own definitions). Or customize this Excel
charting tool as you see fit.

All files associated with these exercises can be found under “Tools” on the MyWays project site.
Related reading
This slide deck
The MyWays Success Framework: Student Competencies for Learning, Work, and Life
Tools
Competency Correlation Tool (for Exercise 1a)
Competency domain Summary Plotting Tool (for Exercise 1b)
Competency Detailed Plotting Tool (for Exercise 1b)
Resources for Exercises 1a & 1b
20

21Putting MyWays to Work / Q.3 – Learning Design
all three of these questions.
How well are we defining and articulating what success looks like for
students attending our school? (Curriculum)

This mapping represents traditional student experience: lots of transmission-
based instruction in the classroom, some labs and research projects focused
on higher-order thinking skills, a smattering of extracurricular activities, and
perhaps some simple minimum wage work with little training.
MyWays Learning Design – The Concepts 22

To develop broader and deeper competencies attuned to today’s real-world
challenges, we need to focus on the situated learning zone where higher-order
thinking skills are interwoven with real-world settings that are either bounded or
complex (unbounded).

Exercise 2a – the first of the three exercises for
Question 2 – addresses whole game learning.
Combining situated learning with other learning
science concepts, David Perkins at Harvard’s
Project Zero developed seven principles for
maintaining the essence of the authentic activity
while creating conditions that support novice
advancement. For more on whole game learning,
read the Whole Game Learning overview. We also
recommend Perkins’very readable book, Making
Learning Whole. The following slide maps
selected Next Gen models to whole game learning.
The slide after that
describes “junior versions,”
Perkins’term for learning
experiences that follow the
seven principles.
Exercises 2a, b, and c
explore how whole game
learning and junior versions
can be used to advance
the MyWays competencies.
These seven principles of whole game learning integrate the most
important elements of learning and developmental science into a practical
guide for developing broader and deeper competencies.

25MyWays Learning Design – The Concepts
Here’s how whole game learning aligns with selected next generation models

Creating a junior version is like inventing Little League – transforming a real-world
“game” into a developmentally appropriate learning experience by:
• Capturing the basic structural features of the full-scale game
• Throwing out what is not as important to start with, while leaving the spirit
and shape of the game intact
• Swapping in simulations, replicas, or scaled-down versions for elements
that are not developmentally appropriate or practically possible
• Setting and maintaining a reasonable level of challenge for the group and
individual learners. This is essential, and requires educators to know:
– The learners - their prior knowledge, their interests, how agile they are as
learners
– Stages of developmental readiness - “what happens to knowledge,
understanding, and self-awareness as children advance from kindergarten
through high school and beyond.”
• Including all seven of the principles of whole game learning
• Prototyping and tuning to align the experience with student capabilities
“The first time around,” says Perkins, “involves at least as much learning for
you as it does for the learners, because you are almost always wrong in some
ways… Only over two or three cycles of working with real learners in real
situations can we expect to home in on truly well-calibrated junior versions.”
Examples of junior versions
Well-designed project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, and studio-based
learning; rich simulations; co-curriculars like theater productions, history fairs, and
DECA; service learning, youth development projects, scouting or Odyssey of the
Mind programs, and apprenticeships can all be valuable junior versions—if they
capture a “whole game” and embed the whole game learning principles.
Creating a Junior Version of a Whole Game
“Put it this way: When I was playing [Little
League] I wasn’t playing full-scale, four bases,
nine innings.
But I was playing a perfectly suitable junior
version of the game. A junior version was just
right for my size and stamina and the number
of kids in the neighborhood.
But when I was studying those shards
of math and history, I wasn’t playing
a junior version of anything.
It was kind of like batting practice
without knowing the whole game.
Why would anyone want to do that?”
David Perkins
26MyWays Learning Design – The Concepts

Exercise 2a:
How well do your projects reflect
the principles of whole game learning?
These exercises are designed to help you
use MyWays and whole game learning to
address the second big question:
How well does our design for learning
and the organization of our school
directly support students' attainment of
that richer, deeper definition of success?
Review the Whole Game Learning
overview before tackling the exercises.
27
Exercises 2a, b, and c – Introduction
Learning Design as Rich as Your Definition of Student Success
Exercise 2b:
How well do your projects harness
the benefits of junior versions?
Exercise 2c:
How well do your projects map
to the MyWays competencies?

Demonstrating whole game learning
with The Mayan Community Project
We demonstrate whole game learning and
Exercises 2a, b, and c using an experiential
learning project developed at a High Tech High
middle school. After researching Mayan culture,
students wrote, illustrated, published, and
marketed a bilingual alphabet book for younger
students. Proceeds helped send impoverished
Guatemalan children to school.
The tools for 2a, b, and c appear on the next three
slides followed by the filled-in demo worksheets
for the Mayan project.
However, we encourage
you to look at the full
demonstration in the
Whole Game Learning
overview where you
will also find a full
description of the
project as well as links
to an extensive set of
the Mayan project
documents.
Use the tools on Slides 32-36 as checklists to aid you in evaluating and
improving learning experiences with respect to:
• The seven principles of whole game learning
• The characteristics of junior versions
• The 20 MyWays competencies
The goal is to equip your learning design team with a reliable process
for critiquing emerging curricula and instruction—strengthening the
connection to learning and developmental science and encouraging the
development of broader and deeper competencies. Even at a quick,
conceptual level, these tools can flag key issues and “help change the
conversation” within your team with respect to transforming teaching
and learning.
In completing the exercises, pick one of these learning design tasks:
• Evaluate one of your existing projects (learning experiences) to
identify gaps, plan improvements, or adapt the design to change or
add competencies;
• Analyze an existing “exemplar” learning experience (like High Tech
High’s Mayan project, or other projects you’ve been impressed with)
for group workshop, or other development purposes; or
• Develop design parameters for the planning of new projects.
Exercises 2a, b, and c — and a case study demonstration 28
Using the tools in tandem to develop learning design
as rich as your definition of student success

29
Exercise 2a.
How well do your projects reflect
the principles of whole game learning?
Assemble a learning design team to evaluate one of your
existing learning experiences (or pick one of the alternative
tasks listed on the previous slide). For this exercise, we
suggest selecting a multi-faceted experience that runs a
semester or more.
Read and discuss the MyWays Whole Game Learning
overview, including the Mayan Community Project
demonstration.
Download the Whole Game Learning Analysis Tool from
the Toolbox.
Working individually, map how your learning experience
aligns with each of the seven whole game learning
principles. Record the strengths and weaknesses within
each principle’s row. (See the Mayan demo for guidance.)
Discuss and combine the individual responses. Come up
with a joint analysis and action plan based on that analysis.
Exercise 2a — The Whole Game Learning Analysis Tool

30Exercise 2b — The Junior Version Characteristics Tool
Exercise 2b.
How well do your projects harness
the benefits of junior versions?
Continue working with your team from Exercise 2a to
perform this second analysis of your project.
Read and discuss the junior versions section of the MyWays
Whole Game Learning overview, including the Mayan
Community Project demonstration.
Download the Junior Versions Characteristics Tool from the
Toolbox.
Working individually, map how well your learning
experience design matches up with the characteristics of
successful junior versions. Record the strengths and
weaknesses within each row of the worksheet. (See the
Mayan demo for guidance.)
Discuss and combine the individual responses. Come up
with a joint analysis and action plan based on that analysis.

Junior Version Characteristics Analysis 31Exercise 2c — The Competency Correlation Tool
Exercise 2c.
How well do your projects map
to the MyWays Competencies?
Continue working with your team from Exercises
2a and b to perform this third and final analysis of
your project.
Review the MyWays Whole Game Learning
overview, including the Mayan Community
Project demonstration.
Download the Competency Correlation Tool from
the Toolbox. You used this tool in exercise 1a to
assess how your entire school model mapped to
the competencies. In the current exercise, you are
invited to drill deeper to assess which
competencies your selected learning experience
project addresses and in what ways and to what
depth.
Record learning details, as well as the strengths
and weaknesses of the project within each row of
the worksheet. (See the Mayan demo for
guidance.)
Discuss and draft a joint analysis and action plan
based on that analysis.

32A case study demonstration of exercises 2a, b, and c
Introducing the
Mayan Community Project
The Whole Game Learning overview demonstrates the
use of these tools in performing a three-part evaluation
of a learning project.
In this slide deck, we have excerpted a brief synopsis
of the Mayan project itself along with the completed
worksheets for 2a, b, and c.
You will also find more extensive information on the
High Tech High Mayan project website.

Summary of the Mayan Community Project
 An extended, interdisciplinary project with individual & group research
on the Mayan culture and Mayan areas of present-day Guatemala
 Application of knowledge to collaborative writing & illustration
of a children’ alphabet book on the Mayan culture
 Publication, marketing and sales of copies of the book to fund schooling
for seven Guatemalan students from impoverished families
• Essential questions: Why is it important to learn about the Mayan civilization today? How are books published
and marketed? What is life currently like for people of Mayan descent?
• Learning goals include: Knowledge of Mayan culture, the reality of poverty in Central America, skills in writing
and editing for publication, actual experience of job roles in the publishing process, business planning, marketing
& sales, and the empowerment of “how to make a difference in a child’s life”!
• Process is in-depth and over time: 12-week project, with approximately 2 hours class time/day, group and
individual research, 2-3 revisions of book pages, student choice of research topics & job roles.
• Authentic, culminating experiences and assessments: Peer editors wielding the “Changes Needed” or
“Approved” stamps, “Book Signing” (exhibition), and book selling activities in and with the local community.

Related reading
This slide deck
Making Learning Whole, by David Perkins
The High Tech High Mayan Community Project website
Tools
Whole Game Learning Analysis Tool (for Exercise 2a)
Junior Version Characteristics Tool (for Exercise 2b)
Competency Correlation Tool (for Exercise 1a and 2c)
37
Resources for Exercises 2a, b, and c
Learning Design as Rich as Your Definition of Student Success

38Putting MyWays to Work / Q.4 – Assessment Design
all three of these questions.
How well are we defining and articulating what success looks like for
students attending our school? (Curriculum)

39
Two key shifts are needed for an effective, nuanced
assessment of broader and deeper competencies.
To measure broader and deeper
competencies comprised of both
capability and agency will
require new approaches to
assessment. Not only must we
begin to assess hard-to-measure
competencies like creativity,
social skills, and wayfinding
abilities; we must also gauge
how well students “own” these
competencies and apply them in
real-world settings.
Next generation assessment
systems that can address this
challenge are some ways in the
future. The crucial first step for
next generation educators, we
believe, is to adopt these two
shifts in assessment practice.
MyWays Assessment Design – The Concepts

Standardized
Student Assessments Tasks in the Outside World
Knowledge is: Measured within a subject
Applied across disciplines, along with other
skills, to solve real-world problems, create
products, and generate new knowledge.
Asked to
address:
Facts and application of
simple procedures to
well‐defined problems
Complex, ill‐structured problems in real-
world contexts.
Work is done: Individually
Individually and in groups of others with
complementary skills to accomplish a shared
goal.
Resources
available:
Without access to outside
information, and use only
paper and pencil
The challenge is to evaluate information
from a wide range of tools and resources to
find what’s relevant to analyze problems
and create solutions
40
The Shift to Greater Authenticity requires moving from poor
proxies to measures of competence in tasks similar to those performed in
the outside world. See the Assessment Overview for further information.
MyWays Assessment Design – The Concepts
Adapted for the Stupski Foundation from Transforming Education: Teaching and Assessing 21st Century Skills (Cisco, Intel, Microsoft), 2010

Traditional assessments, especially most state testing, focuses on performance
on non-authentic measures like multiple choice questions. Better state tests and
AP include essays that enable students to construct responses at higher orders
of thinking, but do not incorporate more complex, authentic contexts or settings.
MyWays Assessment Design – The Concepts 41
NOTE: A set of field of learning slides is available for your use including an empty grid for your own plots.

Assessment of broader & deeper competencies is only fully possible through
measurement embedded in whole game learning approaches involving rich
simulation, extended projects, or immersion in real-world settings – contexts
that increase the development of student agency, capability, and adaptability.

The Shift to Multiple and Varied Measures requires moving
from single, narrow assessments to multiple forms of measurement that
are more varied, more developmentally-nuanced, and better integrated.
While one can envision basic mastery of multiplication
tables being confirmed by simple quizzes or tests,
assessing broader and deeper competencies like
creativity, social skills, and wayfinding abilities requires
a more multifaceted approach.
Because multiple forms of measures for any given
competency are not the norm in traditional school
models, we turn to state driving requirements for new
drivers as a concrete and familiar example of such a
system. At first blush, one might associate the road test
as the qualifier for getting one’s license. However, over
the past century, states have evolved systems of multiple,
mandatory requirements to ensure the safety of drivers,
passengers, and the public.

How do we assess important life skills?
The “driving test”
Learning to drive is one important
real-world skill, for which a mature
system of learning, assessment, and
certification has been developed over
time.
Think about one example, the
Massachusetts driving test. To the left
we list the common components of the
test, and on the following slide, we
analyze what kinds of assessment
experience are embedded in each
component, and how they come
together as an integrated system.
MA Requirements Assessment involved
Written test of road rules –
to get permit
30 hours of classroom
instruction, with test at end
Computer simulations
6 hours of official driving
observation
practice
40 hours additional practice,
usually with parents
2 hour parent education class
The Road Test

How do we assess important life skills?
The “driving test” as a system of multiple, varied
assessments embedded in a learning experience
The MA “driving test”
is actually a series of
assessment-embedded
learning experiences with
multiple forms of
measurement,
addressing content
knowledge, application, and
creative know how, through
authentic performance.
MA Requirements Assessment involved
Written test of road rules –
to get permit
Multiple choice, fact based; summative
gateway to learner’s permit
30 hours of classroom
instruction, with test at end
Formative feedback; scenarios for
understanding of skills, consequences ;
summative test on simple analytical
Computer simulations Incorporating application of knowledge
and skills
observation
Introduction to the authentic learning
environment; group/peer learning
practice
Practice loops in authentic environment
with instant instructor feedback
40 hours additional practice,
usually with parents
Practice loops in varying circumstances
- different adult, different car -
confirming transfer
2 hour parent education class No assessment. Requirement is
“programmatic”/seat time
The Road Test Performance-based assessment in
complex, authentic environment

Similarly, a “next generation” system of learning assessments
will need to integrate the use of five key strategies.
Integration of these strategies will align
assessment with holistic learning, and
help gauge and guide learner progress
towards the new, broader goal-line:
Formative assessment
To provide the essential foundations for
effective learning & personal development
Performance assessment
To provide the rich context for development
and measurement of Agency as well as
Capability
Multiple & varied measures
To address the whole learner and the breadth
of competencies within Next Gen leaning
environments
Badging & micro-credentialing
To integrate “anywhere, anytime learning”
within personalized learning approaches
Quality reviews
To ensure the quality of the learner
experience when outcomes can’t be
measured (and even when they can)

Going deeper with the
five assessment strategies
For each of the five strategies, the Next Gen
Assessment overview includes a one-page
primer, like the one to the right. These primers
are not intended to be comprehensive nor to
provide in-depth analysis of the technical merits
of each strategy, but rather to get design teams
thinking and discussing the level of variety,
nuance, and integration needed to develop
assessments for broader and deeper
competencies.
Each includes brief notes on:
-- Why the strategy is important
-- Examples of this type of measurement
-- Comments “through the MyWays lens”
-- A few resources as food for thought
The overview also includes a one page summary
chart of all five assessment strategies for
reference. Deeper exploration of the strategies
will be provided in forthcoming practice
briefings.

It is important to stress that the
use of all five assessment
strategies extends across all the
MyWays domains and
competencies. What will not
work, we are certain, is to try to
isolate each of the 20
competencies and create a (likely
inauthentic) way to assess each
one! Indeed, educators would not
even want to take each of the
four MyWays domains and chose
a different assessment strategy to
address each of those.
That being said, the Next Gen
Assessment overview provides
a summary of considerations
for assessing in each domain,
like the one to the left, that
summarizes:
• The current state of assessment
• Main approaches currently being
used & new approaches being tried
• Challenges of particular relevance
For those charged with designing learning and its environment,
issues relating to assessment approaches vary somewhat across
the four competency domains.

As Angela Duckworth and David
Yeager urge, at the end of
Measurement Matters:
“Given the advantages, limitations, and
medium-term potential of such measures,
our hope is that the broader educational
community proceeds forward with both
alacrity and caution, and with equal parts
optimism and humility.”
The Next Gen Assessment
overview provides a glimpse at the
ways the field is moving forward,
covering:
• Cautions
• Promising developments
• Ways to work together, including:
- Improvement communities
like Carnegie’s SAIC and
NGLC’s ALP
- Partnerships between schools
and assessment experts
- Adaptation of approaches from
other sectors
The field of next gen assessment is still emerging. Careful thought is warranted
about the use of various assessment measures, especially for agency and Habits of Success;
nevertheless, given the importance of these broader competencies, it seems equally impor-
tant to avoid “analysis paralysis” and to forge ahead in collaborative and thoughtful ways.

Exercise 3a:
How well is your school currently
employing the five strategies that
support next generation assessment?
These exercises are designed to help you use
MyWays and the five assessment strategies
to address the third big question:
How do we gauge students' progress in
developing those competencies? And: How
can we measure and articulate our school’s
overall performance, beyond proficiency in
ELA and math?
Review the Next Gen Assessment overview
before tackling the exercises.
50
Exercises 3a and 3b
Assessment Design as Integrated as Your Definition of Student Success
Exercise 3b:
How well is your school using elements
of the five strategies to assess student
progress within your learning projects?

Use the tools on the next two slides as checklists to aid you in
evaluating and improving assessment experiences with respect to:
• The shifts to greater authenticity & multiple and varied measures
• The five assessment strategies most relevant to promoting the
expanded success definition
• The 20 MyWays competencies
The goal is to equip your assessment design team with a reliable
process for critiquing emerging assessment approaches—strengthening
the extent to which you integrate your assessment with your learning,
move towards more authentic tasks, and increase the range of
assessment approaches in order to address broader and deeper
competencies. Even at a quick, conceptual level,
these tools can flag key issues and “help
change the conversation” within your
team with respect to transforming
assessment as a force for teachers
to better know their students and
how to guide them, as well as for
learners to get to understand
themselves more fully.
51
Using the tools in tandem to design assessment as
integrated as your success definition and your learning model
Recapping the earlier exercises
Exercises 3a and b build on the exercises in
packets 1 and 2.
Exercises 1a and b explored the MyWays
competency model, first comparing your
school’s student success definition to
MyWays and then using the MyWays
Competency Plotting Tool to generate a
competency plot of an individual’s current
strengths, needs, and goals across the full
set of MyWays competencies.
Exercises 2a, b, and c utilized the whole
game learning principles to explore how
well your learning projects reflect those
principles, harness the benefits of junior
versions, and map to the MyWays
competencies.
Of course, your competency objectives,
learning design, and assessment design all
work together—and the seven MyWays
tools presented in these exercises can be
used in multiple ways and combinations.
Exercise 3a and 3b — and a case study demonstration

52Exercise 3a – Employing the five strategies that support next gen assessment
Exercise 3a.
How well is your school currently employing the
five strategies that support next gen assessment?
Assemble a team to evaluate the assessment strategies you
use in each of the four competency domains.
Read and discuss the Next Gen Assessment overview to
more fully understand the two shifts and five assessment
strategies. It is important for group members to be working
from the strategy descriptions provided, rather than from
individual interpretations of the strategy titles.
Download the Assessment-Competency Correlation Tool
from the Toolbox.
Working as a group, list the various assessment methods
your school is using currently for each domain. Capture
especially methods designed to assess student performance
in the outside world (authenticity); but also note that not all
strategies need be employed in each domain. Discuss and
describe strengths and problem areas worthy of attention.
Discuss the completed worksheet. Come up with a joint
analysis of areas of strength and needed improvement.
Generate an action plan based on that analysis.
Use the MyWays competency domains to analyze your
overall assessment system.
Note: you can also do this analysis at the more detailed
level of each competency. Detailed worksheets for each
domain are provided.
Objectives: Gaining familiarity with the five strategies;
visualizing your assessment strategies across your learning
model; identifying areas for strengthening or augmenting
Enlarged on next slide

53Exercise 3a – Mapping assessments across the competency domains

54Exercise 3b – Using the five strategies to assess student progress
Exercise 3b.
How well is your school using elements of
the five strategies to assess student progress
within your learning projects?
This exercise in analyzing how multiple assessment
strategies are used within a specific learning project
is best understood by reviewing the demonstration
using the Mayan Community Project.
Assemble a team to evaluate one of your existing
learning experiences. We suggest selecting a multi-
faceted experience (a junior version) that runs a
semester or more.
Read and discuss the Next Gen Assessment
overview, including descriptions of the five
strategies (important to work from shared
understanding of them) and Mayan demo.
Download the Assessment Strategy Analysis Tool
from the Toolbox.
Working as a team, describe how each of the five
assessment strategies is used (or not used) to assess
student progress within that learning project.
Record strengths and weaknesses within each
assessment strategy. (See the Mayan demo for
guidance.)
Discuss and come up with a joint analysis and
action plan based on that analysis.

Introducing the
Mayan Community Project
The Next Gen Assessment overview demonstrates the
use of the Assessment Strategy Analysis Tool in
performing an evaluation of assessment practice in the
same project as the one used for demonstration of the
learning design tools introduced earlier in Exercise 2.
In this slide deck, we have excerpted a brief synopsis of
the Mayan project itself along with just one section of
the completed worksheet for 3b.
We encourage you to look for the full demo, including
extensive assessment strategy worksheet, in Next Gen
Assessment—as well as to connect all of this to the
Mayan project learning design demo in the Whole Game
Learning overview. While we have addressed learning
and assessment separately within this series, the two are,
rightly, deeply integrated in the design and
implementation of the Mayan project.
A case study demonstration of exercise 3b

Summary of the Mayan Community Project
 An extended, interdisciplinary project with individual & group research
on the Mayan culture and Mayan areas of present-day Guatemala
 Application of knowledge to collaborative writing & illustration
of a children’ alphabet book on the Mayan culture
 Publication, marketing and sales of copies of the book to fund schooling
for seven Guatemalan students from impoverished families
• Essential questions: Why is it important to learn about the Mayan civilization today? How are books published
and marketed? What is life currently like for people of Mayan descent?
• Learning goals include: knowledge of Mayan culture, the reality of poverty in Central America, skills in writing
and editing for publication, actual experience of job roles in the publishing process, business planning, marketing
& sales, and the empowerment of “how to make a difference in a child’s life”!
• Process is in-depth and over time: 12-week project, with approximately 2 hours class time/day, group and
individual research, 2-3 revisions of book pages, student choice of research topics & job roles.
• Authentic, culminating experiences and assessments: Peer editors wielding the “Changes Needed” or
“Approved” stamps, “Book Signing” (exhibition), and book selling activities in and with the local community.
56A case study demonstration of exercise 3b

57A case study demonstration of exercise 3b
This is the first of
five sections of the
assessment strategy
analysis for the
Mayan Community
Project.
You can find the full
analysis in the Next
Gen Assessment
overview.

58
Related reading
This slide deck
Tools
Assessment-Competency Correlation Tool (for Exercise 3a)
Assessment Strategy Analysis Tool (for Exercise 3b)
MyWays Field of Learning slides
Resources for Exercises 3a & 3b
Assessment Design as Integrated as Your Definition of Student Success

The MyWays Success Framework: Student Competencies for Learning, Work, and Life

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