By working on just a few questions a week, learners use IXL to make progress towards a lot of big learning goals, like improving their test scores or meeting grade-level expectations. But sometimes these big goals can be intimidating, making it hard for students to get started. To help make the bigger goals more approachable for your learners, you can create smaller, easier-to-manage objectives around their IXL usage that work up to their larger goals.
Luckily, IXL’s student dashboard makes it easy to set goals that your students can track on their own! This learning homepage is a one-stop-shop for students to keep track of what they should be working on and how they’re progressing so far. With the dashboard, you can help your learner understand what kind of work on IXL will make the most impact on their education.
Use smaller goals to motivate students
The “How am I doing?” section of the dashboard breaks down learners’ time on IXL into a couple of easy-to-understand stats and fun awards. These are a great jumping-off point for goal setting around regular practice. Here are a few of our favorite ways to help students self-motivate with their personal progress tracking:
1. Make progress in 2 skills a week
IXL is research proven to help students learn new content in a way that sticks. And that doesn’t always mean practicing a skill to a score of 100. In fact, reaching proficiency (a SmartScore of 80) in two skills a week has been shown to make a big difference on end-of-year tests.
Encourage your learners to make progress in at least 2 skills each week and aim for a SmartScore of 80 in each skill they work on.
2. Set daily question goals
A little goes a long way! Working on IXL a little bit every day can help students lock in learning without overwhelming them. Ask students to practice 5 to 10 questions a day to ensure they’re making steady progress. They can check their dashboard at the end of each day to see their total questions going up.
3. Set a daily time goal
Similar to a question goal, a time goal can help learners build up the habit of practicing a little bit each day. Tell your students to set aside 10-15 minutes each day to work on IXL. Remind them to find a quiet place to work and set a timer for uninterrupted work time so they can achieve a deeper focus.
4. Beat the weekly average
Friendly competition is a great way to motivate learning. So why not have learners compete against themselves? Under each progress stat is the average of the student’s weekly work on IXL compared to the previous week.
Have your learners try to meet or exceed their weekly averages. You can keep track of each week’s progress and give them a reward for meeting their goal every month.
5. Choose an award to work towards
Students already love earning awards, which makes them an easy way to set goals. On the awards page, learners can hover over the question marks of hidden awards to see what kind of skills they need to work on to uncover it.
Ask your students to pick out at least one award a week that they want to work towards.
If they meet their goal, the student dashboard will let them know that they have new awards to uncover! And, they’ll probably earn a few extra awards as they work towards the one they chose.
Communicate your expectations
Once you’ve set goals with your students about what kind of usage they’re aiming for, it’s important to clarify which skills you’d like them to work on. For each larger goal a student is working towards, they’ll need to focus their attention on what will make the most impact. Communicate your expectations around how students spend their time on IXL, and let them know that they have support if they need it.
Direct learners to the right skills
On the student dashboard, the “What should I work on?” section provides learners with specific skills to work on based on their assignments and previous practice. Tell your students which skills you’d like them to focus on the most—whether that’s assignments, their personal recommendations, or a mix of both!
Get more personalization with IXL’s Diagnostic
To give students even more benefits from IXL, have them keep their diagnostic strands up to date. With only 10-15 questions a week in the Diagnostic arena, learners can keep their scores pinpointed and get better skill recommendations as a result. These diagnostic recommendations make it easier for you and your students to find the right skills to close learning gaps or provide students with appropriate next steps for their learning level. Plus, they give you better insight into each students’ current understanding of a subject.
Assigning the diagnostic is an easy way to keep this top of mind for students. From your IXL account, go to the Assessment tab and click the “Keep your Real-Time Diagnostic up to date!” button to automatically put a reminder on the student dashboard. Let your learners know that spending a little time in the Diagnostic arena each week is one of the goals you want them to focus on.
Create a schedule to keep learners on track
Another simple way to help learners stay on top of their learning goals is to set up a simple schedule for their IXL work. When IXL is part of a regular routine, it’s easier for students to get into the habit of setting aside time to learn, and it provides another small goal to work towards for each day of the week.
We recommend spending one day a week working in the Diagnostic arena to keep knowledge levels up to date and splitting the rest of the week between working on suggested skills and skills from a student’s action plan.
