The Understanding Grid - what it is and how to use it

For the purposes of this article it is assumed that students are on a triple science course, as it is easier to explain through examples; however, the Understanding Grid works in the same way for all subjects.

What is it?

The Understanding Grid is a self-populating PLC (personal learning checklist), and is the most powerful tool Tassomai offers parents and teachers. Watch this video to find out how it works, or read the article below!

The understanding Grid instantly shows teachers and parents where users are struggling and might need help or intervention. It is broken down into three different levels; subjects, topics and themes.

The dots show how well a learner is doing in that particular subject, topic or theme. The colour of the dot represents that student's accuracy, while the size represents how much of the content that student has seen. This means that if a dot is red or orange, it probably isn't a problem if it's a small dot - but might be an issue when it starts getting larger.

How does it work?

When you first open up the Understanding Grid it will show you the top level - the subject. In the case of triple science, the three columns are biology, chemistry and physics. As you look down the column you can see how well each user is doing in that particular subject, but this is obviously quite vague - there can be 1000 questions in a subject, so an overall average isn't necessarily that helpful!

To see this information in more detail, simply click on the subject name that you are interested in and you will see all the themes within that subject. These themes correspond with the specification, and let you see in more detail which areas students are struggling or excelling in.

If you click on the theme name you will go to an even finer level of granularity, the topic level.

To see the full name of the subject, theme or topic, simply hover your mouse over it - this will also tell you how many questions there are as well. This can be useful as they can vary in size depending on how much information is in the specification.

Problem questions

There is one more feature which is available in the Understanding Grid - "Problem Questions". If you click on one of the dots in the grid you will see the last five questions in that topic which they have answered incorrectly, and the last three answers that they chose.