Khan Academy's Official Digital SAT Prep Webinar

Good afternoon, and welcome to preparing your school for the digital SAT webinar. We are so happy that you're able to join us this afternoon to learn more about the new digital SAT and how KH Academy can help support your teachers, students, and community with this transition.

My name is Elizabeth Hadley, and I am a district success manager supporting several districts across the United States with Khan Academy. So let's get started!

We will officially start with digital SAT prep with KH Academy. As you may know, KH Academy is the official partner with College Board, meaning that our strategies, our tips, our videos, explanations, and practice questions are aligned to the content that your students will expect to see on the new digital SAT assessment.

Some of the items that students can practice with include eight full-length practice tests, leveled exercise videos, lessons and strategies, personalized practice for each and every student, tips and tricks for your students to tackle the big test day, and of course, instant feedback and progress tracking as your students practice.

We have two digital SAT prep courses embedded in KH Academy: the reading and writing section and the math section. Something that my team is really excited to share with you is that not only are these courses mastery-enabled, meaning that students can track their progress all year long, but students can also engage with assignable content that teachers assign to them. I'll get into that and exactly how that works shortly.

Last but not least, we have a course challenge. The course challenge that you see at the bottom of the screen here is a 30-question assessment that helps students get on the right track and see where they should start their learning. We highly suggest that students start with the course challenge to receive a personalized learning path when they engage with our digital SAT courses on Khan Academy.

The digital SAT course functions just like any other course you may be familiar with, or your teachers may be familiar with in Khan Academy. They are mastery-enabled, and they look just like our math courses that you may have seen before on the platform. This means that teachers are able to create assignments, view student progress, and hold students accountable for their learning.

In the past, students would link their College Board account to Khan Academy to receive personalized practice, but we know that linking to College Board was a very time-consuming process for many of our educators. We're pleased to announce that students no longer need to link their Khan Academy account to their College Board account.

Now, students can take the course challenge that I was just speaking about. The course challenge will provide students a sampling of skills on the content enabled in the digital SAT courses, prioritizing for the student exactly what they should be working on to prepare for the big test day.

Finally, students can move through the course at their own pace. While teachers have the ability to assign content and really target assignments and skills that may mirror what they're working on in class, students can work through the course at their own pace and can move forward to a new skill or a new concept when they actually feel ready. That's something that we love to promote here at Khan Academy.

So, let's dive right in! What is actually changing with the digital SAT? This may be a review for some of you, and this may be new content, so I hope we all learn something as we dive into what's changing with the new SAT.

First and foremost, the test is shorter. This is something many educators are excited about because it is a more condensed assessment, and it's not taking hours and hours for students to complete. We're looking at a total test time of approximately about two hours. Another major change that you'll see at the top of the screen is that there is no more essay on the digital SAT.

Let's take us through all of the sections. Obviously, the test will be taken through a digital assessment platform called Bluebook, and there will be two sections: the reading and writing section and the math section. Each section will have two modules, and within the two modules, students will experience a multi-stage adaptive testing format. This means that how students answer questions in module one will dictate and target the type of questions they receive in module two.

For reading and writing, each module will have 27 questions, and students are given 32 minutes per module. Additionally, with the elimination of the essay, there are also new question formats for math. Two modules will have 22 questions and 35 minutes. The biggest change to the math section is that a calculator is now allowed on all sections of the digital SAT math section. This is something very important to make sure that educators know across the board: now a calculator is allowed on the math section.

Now, let’s take a look at just the reading and writing section. The reading and writing test will focus on not only the interpretation and evaluation of text, but also the analysis and editing of content—level and grade-level specific text sets. The blueprint published by the College Board has questions that are divided into four categories: information and ideas, craft and structure, expression of ideas, and standard English conventions.

Off to the right-hand side of your screen, you can see the fact that craft and structure consists of about 28% of that assessment. That’s really important for us to know as we're engaging our students in practice, that a significant portion of that assessment is from the craft and structure category.

So what's changed with the SAT reading and writing test? For one, the test is now combined. We did speak about that: they're no longer two separated sections. The reading and writing is now combined into one section. Additionally, there are shorter passages for students to engage with.

As they're going through those questions in the reading and writing section, please keep in mind that the passages are much shorter, meaning that there will be a short chunk of text and a question that follows related to that chunk of text. That's really important for teachers to know because, as they practice with students throughout the course of the year in preparation for the SAT, they no longer have to read very long text sets.

I believe that this allows for ELA and English teachers to provide more frequent practice with students because they're not having to read such very long texts. So definitely keep that in mind! On Khan Academy, students will have plenty of opportunities to practice with these shorter pieces of text and text-dependent questions, and of course, the digital SAT includes new types of questions with a greater number of passages that require new strategies for our students to engage with those texts.

Okay, the math blueprint—let's move on over to math. The digital SAT math is also divided into four sections: algebra, advanced math, problem solving data analysis, and geometry and trigonometry. As you see in the blueprint, you'll notice that over 35% of the assessment for the new digital SAT math comes from the algebra section.

In Khan Academy, not only do students have availability and access to our digital SAT course, but we also have an algebra course as well that students can engage with. Keeping in mind, these four sections are essential for our students to be proficient in because these are what the College Board says are needed for college and career success.

Again, let's return back to that calculator usage. Keeping in mind, a Desmos calculator is allowed and will be in the platform for students to engage with. Students can also bring their own graphing calculator. Not only will students have access to the digital Desmos calculator in the platform, but they can also still bring their handheld calculator, if that is what the student chooses to do.

Of course, shorter test, updated format, digital platform, and the questions are divided into three categories: foundational questions, medium questions, and advanced questions. Just like the reading and writing section, the average length of the word problems has also been reduced, so keep in mind the questions are not as wordy and long as they used to be. They are a lot more complex.

There are two formats of questions on the digital SAT math section. On the left-hand side, you'll see that there are student-produced responses, meaning that this will require students to produce their own answer. And on the right-hand side of my screen, multiple choice, which is what we are typically all used to—there are four possible answer choices and students must select an answer.

Within Khan Academy, we offer not only the reading and writing course, but also the math course. For reading and writing, we have hundreds of official digital SAT items that are aligned with 11 skills for students to work through. In math, there are 37 skills, meaning there are thousands of items for our students to practice with to prepare for the digital SAT.

Within those skills, students will find not only in-depth lesson articles, but video worked examples, practice exercises, and three difficulty levels. There are also course challenge quizzes, unit tests, and skill progress data available to both the student and the teacher.

By partnering with the College Board, we know that these items that the students are working through are authentically aligned to the content on the digital SAT. At Khan Academy, we believe in this idea of mastery learning. Mastery learning is an educational approach where students focus on fully understanding the content that they're working through and not moving on when they're not ready.

I'm going to play a quick video on mastery learning, and then we’ll come back and discuss what it means for our students to engage with mastery learning.

"Have you ever really tried to learn something and you just couldn't? It can make you feel like you're not so smart, right? Well, it's not your fault and it's not your teacher's fault. It's just our traditional approach to learning. We go through school and we accumulate gaps. You're a bit shaky on pre-algebra, but you move on to algebra anyway. By the time you get to calculus, you've got lots of gaps. If enough gaps build up, you eventually hit a wall. Calculus makes no sense, and that can be frustrating.

But what if there were a different way to learn? That's mastery learning. Unlike traditional learning, where all students move in lock-step, with mastery learning, you go at your own pace. You progress through questions at just the right level for you. If you get 50% right the first time, it's not a big deal—try as many times as you need, get feedback as you learn, and help when you need it.

Teachers can track your progress, identify any gaps, and give you one-on-one attention. Decades of research show mastery learning works. Now you have the tools to make it possible. Are you ready to learn anything?"

So, as mentioned in the video, mastery learning is this idea that students fully and deeply understand the content that they're learning. Not only does this promote an idea of mastery, but also an assurance that we know students are understanding and fully deepening their skill set with the skills they're learning.

This not only leads to long-term retention, but just a better approach to fully learning our concepts through Khan Academy. I'm going to take us through the actual Khan Academy website now and the platform, and I invite you to open up another tab and visit khanacademy.org. If you have an account, go ahead and log in. If you're not, you are more than welcome to just watch our screen, but I do invite you to open up your account if you have one now.

We're going to take a look at how the Khan Academy course content is organized, specifically in relation to the digital SAT courses. All of our courses, including the digital SAT ones, are organized into courses, but there are also units and lessons. Within those lessons, you'll see instructional videos, articles, practice exercises, and all of that is assignable content, meaning the teacher can assign that to students and track their progress on whatever they have assigned to them.

If the teacher chooses not to assign content, the students have the freedom to work through these courses and progress through each of the units. So, moving over to the Khan Academy platform when you log in, you're able to see your dashboard or any classes that you've created. I'm actually going to go up to the courses tab, where you're able to view all of the courses that we have available on the platform.

Because we're focusing on the transition to the digital SAT today, we'll click into the digital SAT under the test prep section. Now, I'm going to focus on the math for right now. This is the digital SAT math. When I click into that, we are now opened up to the entire course. On the left-hand side, you'll see those units I was just talking about, starting with the first unit about the digital SAT. This is the very first unit that students can engage with to look at what's actually changing with the SAT and how to prepare for it.

So that's really the first unit that we suggest students start with. These units are almost like chapters in a textbook. The digital SAT math has 111 skills for students to work through within 13 units. When you click on the unit, you're able to see the topics that are within the unit. After I clicked on unit two, you can see that we're looking at solving linear equations, linear equation word problems, and linear relationship word problems.

Within each of these skills are videos, articles, and practice quizzes. Those practice quizzes are where students can demonstrate their mastery learning with each of these skills. In the lower left-hand corner is the course challenge—that is that personalized practice journey or practice learning journey that I suggested students take as soon as they start with the digital SAT course.

This is a 30-question test that will assess students' understanding of a variety of skills from the course. I'm going to give everyone in the webinar a moment to not only navigate to the courses through khanacademy.org but take a look at what's available in our digital SAT courses. For those that are unable to join on another screen, I will walk through several of these courses and demonstrate some of that content.

What I would like you to do is put in the question and answer box what you notice or what you think is one thing that you could start implementing with students right now to get them ready for the digital SAT using our Khan Academy course. Just take a moment to look through the course, and for those that are unable to join on another screen, I am clicking through some of our content so you can check it out.

Again, this content is all available to you right now today by visiting khanacademy.org, clicking into the courses, navigating to the digital SAT course, and clicking into either the digital SAT math or the digital SAT reading and writing. As I'm clicking through, I hope you're able to see we have lots of articles, videos, frequently asked questions, quizzes, and unit quizzes throughout our content.

Now, at the top, you'll notice that students will have these boxes. I'm going to move back over to our slide deck here so we can talk about mastery learning. We've already discussed this idea of mastery learning, but how can students and teachers track this?

As students start working through our content, they can demonstrate their understanding of the skills in these courses through the four mastery levels that you're seeing here on the screen. The four mastery levels embedded in our content are: not started, attempted, familiar, proficient, and mastered. These levels help you track your progress in the students' areas of improvement that they need to work on.

Obviously, mastered means that students have demonstrated at least twice that they understand the content and have received a 100% on a quiz. Proficient is when students have demonstrated 100% on a skill in a quiz at least once. Familiar and attempted are students that are still working on mastery and proficiency with those skills.

As students work, their boxes on these skills will start to fill in with the appropriate mastery level color, and as students hover over these, they'll be able to see exactly what skill that is. Now, if I move over to the teacher dashboard, what does this look like for teachers? I'm going to click into a digital SAT math course, and teachers are able to see what proficiency level or what mastery level here that our students are falling under for each of our skills.

For example, in solving linear equations and inequalities at the foundational level, as students work, they will start to be categorized under the attempted, familiar, proficient, or mastered range. In this example, my students haven't been working too much, and they haven't even started on this skill, but as students begin to engage, they'll start to fall into one of these categories.

This is a great way for teachers to differentiate what the students really need based on their mastery level. How to use course and unit mastery goals in our digital SAT courses? Teachers have the ability to assign a course mastery goal and unit mastery goals. Let's talk a little bit about what these are.

Course mastery and unit mastery work hand-in-hand and together to track students' progress. Unit mastery focuses on individual specific topics, while the course mastery is the entire course. Let's walk through an example. If I were to start my students today on the digital SAT math course, I can assign a course mastery goal and set that goal to be due right before SAT or right before they take the SAT.

That's a goal that this teacher can set, and it stays all year long until the due date. The goal is for students to master at least 80% of the content. Keep in mind the mastery levels that we just discussed. As students start working, the teacher has the ability to assign a unit mastery. These are the individual units within the course, and teachers can assign just one particular unit for students to work through at any given time.

For instance, if the teacher is working on linear equations in the classroom, she can assign that unit that has linear equations, and track their mastery with that particular unit. As students work through the units, it will contribute to their overall course mastery goal. We suggest using both mastery goals throughout the year to track students' progress through the entire course.

Let me show you how to assign these and get started. After the teacher has made classes and added students, over here on the left side navigation bar is an assign button. Under assign, under mastery goals, select the course that you want to assign a course mastery goal to. You can select any of the courses that are available, but since we're talking about the digital SAT today, I will make sure that I have the digital SAT math for reading one checked for this example.

I'll pick the digital SAT reading and writing one and make sure that my radio dial is on course mastery. Over here is where you can set your due date. So if I'm going to have students engage with the SAT in late March, I may set this for an April 1 deadline. Then down here, all the teacher needs to do is click create course goal, and bam!, the student will have that course goal assigned to their account. It will notify the student that the teacher has assigned a course mastery goal.

As students work, teachers can go back to the left side navigation bar here under progress, and they're able to click on their mastery goal progress to monitor how much of the content each of their students in the classes have mastered throughout the year. For example, Rees has mastered 26% of this course, while Janet on the other hand has mastered 49% of the course. The goal is for students to reach at least 80% mastery.

This is a great way for teachers to track that students are going through the content, they're practicing skills, and they're achieving mastery. Now, remember we talked a little bit about unit mastery goals. Let me show you those from the left side navigation bar. Under assign, select the course that you'd like to assign a unit mastery goal to. For this example, I'm using the digital SAT math course, and underneath this radio dial, unit mastery are all the different units within the course.

The teacher can decide to assign foundations of algebra, which contains eight skills, and set a shorter due date for students to master those skills. Possibly, maybe by January 3rd, we would expect students to be finished with that course. Then just click create unit goal, and that will assign a unit goal for those eight skills to the students.

This is a great way to progress monitor throughout the entire course and monitor students' abilities between now and SAT school day or whenever they sit for the SAT. Monitoring assignments—from your teacher dashboard, this is something new to our digital SAT courses that we're super excited about because teachers can assign specific videos, articles, quizzes, and unit quizzes to students and then actually see the students' score and when they completed it.

Heading back over into the platform here under assignments, there is this assign button. So if I was just getting started with my students on engaging them with this digital SAT math course, I may want to just first assign the "about the digital SAT" unit. That is the very first unit in our course and is a great way to get students comfortable with the fact that the SAT is changing to a digital format.

By simply clicking on assignments and assign, I can look at that first unit. I can even preview as a teacher what's actually in that unit. In this first unit, there’s a lesson, an article, a video, a couple more articles with frequently asked questions, and then there's an entire section on preparing for the SAT. This is a great way to start our students off!

So, once I've previewed all of this content, over to the right-hand side, I can select exactly which content I want to give to my students. I don’t suggest doing too many at once; it's great to chunk this material for students. Here, I’ve selected just the first couple of articles and videos, and in the upper right-hand corner is an assign button.

What I love about this is I can assign this to all my students or a group of students. Think about in a classroom—maybe I would want one group to work on the article and video, and another group to work on the "about the digital SAT math test" and the frequently asked questions. So, teachers have that functionality to assign this to all or select students.

They can also assign this to multiple classes at once. If they've set up several class periods, they can assign it all right here one at a time, or all at once, and you can also set a due date, so a start time and a due date that you would expect students to have this completed by.

Once the teacher has assigned the assignments, over here on the left-hand navigation bar is a scores button. This is where teachers can view the students' names, exactly what has been assigned to them, and what their scores were. If it was a video, they'll simply see a check mark. But if it was a quiz, they'll see an actual score, like you see here on our screen.

This is downloadable to CSV and can be transferred to many grade books as well from that EX file. We know that parents are a vital part of student success, not only for the SAT but in their educational career as well. Please know that we do have a Khan Academy app available in several languages so you can reach all of your parents.

Not only is the app available in multiple languages, but it also allows parents to access all of the content that you previewed today in any of our courses. They can track their students' progress, set goals and monitor those goals for their children, access practice exercises and quizzes, and monitor their students' mastery in the courses that the teacher has assigned.

Thinking about what you've learned about the digital SAT today and all of the changes that are occurring, and what is available in the platform, when you're thinking about a school-wide approach or even a district-wide approach, definitely consider Khan Academy.

Khan Academy districts allow your leadership teams and district teams to take a systematic approach to implementation. This allows you to not only roster your students automatically through Clever or Classlink, but it also enables you to monitor those skills and those mastery levels by skills that I was showing you, by school, by teacher, or by district.

To find out more about Khan Academy districts, please visit our Khan Academy District's website. With that partnership, not only will you save time and provide actionable insights to drill down to actual skills from our courses, but you also receive a district success manager that aligns your school's or district’s goals to implementation.

And you also get high-level reports so you can drill into the classes, schools, and the entire district and save time by monitoring your teachers and your students' progress. Again, you do get professional rostering through Classlink or Clever, so your teachers don't have to create their own classes and add their students.

Of course, professional learning is included with Khan Academy districts so teachers feel confident in how to set up their classes, assign mastery goals, and look at that assignable content. We love being able to train our teachers, get them ready, and get all of the students ready for the digital SAT.

We thank you so much for your time today, and we welcome any questions that you have in the chat for us to answer in regards to the content provided today. Again, thank you so much for joining our webinar on preparing students for the digital SAT, and we hope that you get in there and engage your students with our two new courses: the digital SAT reading and writing and our math course. Thank you so much!