In this article
Mirror's Group Dashboard, provides actionable data on each reflection and helps you understand growth over time.
Here's how we define our metrics:
Lesson
In the context of Mirror, the "Lesson" is designed to identify learning gaps or adaptive lessons that help students expand their thinking. It uncovers deeper insights about the student's understanding and growth, in relation to the learning objective.
In Mirror, the "Lesson" aims to uncover these less obvious but crucial aspects of a student's learning experience. By identifying learning gaps and adaptive lessons, Mirror helps teachers and students better understand the student's development and guides how to support their growth beyond the explicit curriculum.
- The term "Lesson" generally refers to the often unstated but critical knowledge, ideas, perspectives or skills that underpin so much of success in school. This contrasts with the formal curriculum, which consists of the courses, lessons, and learning activities students participate in.
- Example: Things that a mentor or coach would give you insights on so you won’t have to figure it out on your own.
Zone
In Mirror, the "Zone" is inspired by the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), a theory developed by psychologist Lev Vygotsky.
Mirror calculates the Zone by analyzing reflections to assess whether the learning activities and experiences provided are appropriately challenging and supportive for a participant’s current level of development. It helps determine if the tasks and lessons are within the participant’s ZPD, allowing optimal growth and learning.
The Zone provides insights to gauge a participant’s level of challenge, their needed level of support, and any stress or frustration they might be experiencing.
Zone is represented on a scale, where “Ideal” is the perfect level of challenge, “Below” indicates too little challenge, and “Above” indicates excessive challenge or stress.
For example, teachers can use the Zone to adjust their instructional strategies and ensure students are appropriately challenged. This may involve modifying the complexity of tasks, providing additional support or resources, or offering more challenging activities for students ready to move beyond their current level.
The Zone in Mirror helps make data-driven decisions about how to best support each participant’s unique learning needs and foster their development over time.
Understanding
The Understanding Score is one of the key metrics provided by Mirror to help teachers assess their students' grasp of the learning objectives. It is designed to offer a comprehensive view of how well students are constructing meaning and demonstrating their understanding of the concepts being taught.
The Understanding Score is calculated based on three main components:
1. Recall: This dimension evaluates the student’s ability to remember and recite key information from the learning experience. It assesses how well the student can retain and retrieve relevant facts, details, and concepts.
2. Construct: This aspect focuses on how students organize, interpret, and make sense of the information they have learned. It examines the student’s ability to make connections, relate to, identify patterns, and build a coherent understanding of the subject matter.
3. Transform: This component assesses students’ capacity to apply learning to new situations, generate original ideas, come to new realizations, and demonstrate higher-order thinking skills. It evaluates how well students can use their understanding to solve problems, create new knowledge, or engage in critical thinking.
Mirror analyzes the student’s reflection based on these three dimensions and provides an overall Understanding Score. This score is accompanied by written feedback that offers insights into the student's strengths and areas for improvement in each dimension.
For teachers, the Understanding Score serves as a valuable formative assessment tool. It helps them identify where students may be struggling, adjust their instruction accordingly, and provide targeted support to individual students. By breaking down the score into its parts (recall, construct, and transform), teachers can better understand each student's learning progress and tailor their teaching strategies to meet specific needs.
For students, the Understanding Score and its associated feedback provide a clear picture of their learning and help them identify areas where they can focus their efforts to deepen their understanding. The feedback is designed to be actionable and encouraging, empowering students to take ownership of their learning and make continuous improvements.
Overall, the Understanding Score is a powerful tool for both teachers and students. It offers a data-driven approach to assessing and supporting student understanding. It goes beyond simple right or wrong answers and provides a more comprehensive view of how students construct meaning and apply their learning in meaningful ways.
Mindset
Mindset assesses a participant’s attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions towards learning. It includes and expands on the concept of a growth mindset, as developed by psychologist Carol Dweck. A growth mindset is the belief that one's abilities and intelligence can be developed and improved through dedication and hard work, as opposed to a fixed mindset, which views abilities as static and unchangeable.
The score is determined by considering various factors, which include:
1. Tone: the participant's sentiment regarding the language used in their reflection
2. Ability: an evaluation of evidence showcasing a growth, neutral, or fixed Mindset, influenced by Carol Dweck's research
3. Motivation: a measurement of the participant’s desire to continue learning about the topic, including any goals or plans expressed in the reflection
Mindset in Mirror gives insights into the participant’s attitudes towards learning. For example, by understanding their students’ mindsets, teachers can tailor their instructional strategies and feedback to promote the development of a growth mindset. This may involve praising effort and progress rather than innate ability, encouraging students to embrace challenges, and framing mistakes as learning opportunities.
For students, receiving feedback on their Mindset score can help them become more aware of their attitudes and beliefs about learning. It can encourage them to adopt a growth mindset, which has been shown to lead to higher achievement, increased motivation, and greater resilience in the face of setbacks.
Mindset is represented on a scale, where “Ideal” is the most productive attitude for learning, while “Below” and “Above” indicate when a participant’s attitude may be overly negative or positive in a way that inhibits learning. Along with the score, Mirror provides personalized feedback and recommendations to help students develop and maintain a growth mindset over time.
Depending on the Mindset percent, different weather pictures will be displayed:
Mindset in Mirror is a valuable tool for promoting a culture of growth and continuous improvement in the classroom. By empowering teachers and students with insights into their attitudes towards learning, Mirror helps foster a mindset that is essential for success in school and beyond. Depending on the Mindset percent different weather pictures will be displayed.
Tone
Back of the card
The back of the card in Mirror provides additional in-depth insights and analytics for teachers, allowing them to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their students' learning and development. The back of the card insights are not visible to students. While the front of the card offers key metrics such as the Understanding Score, Zone, and Mindset, the back dives deeper into the cognitive, social-emotional, and developmental aspects of the student's reflection.
The information available on the back of the card includes:
- Cognitive Bias: This detects any potential cognitive biases the student may have displayed in their reflection, such as confirmation bias, anchoring bias, or hindsight bias. By identifying these biases, teachers can help students develop more objective and critical thinking skills.
- Hidden Lesson: This section reiterates the key insight from the front of the card, emphasizing the underlying learning gap or adaptive lesson the student needs to focus on for growth and improvement.
- Order of Mind: This identifies the developmental stage the student is exhibiting based on the theories of Robert Kegan and Jean Piaget. It helps teachers understand their students' cognitive and moral development and tailor their teaching strategies accordingly.
The back of the card is designed to provide teachers with a comprehensive diagnostic tool for understanding their students' learning and development. By combining insights from various frameworks and theories, such as Kegan's Orders of Mind, Piaget's stages of cognitive development, 21st Century Skills, and CASEL's social-emotional learning competencies, Mirror offers teachers a rich and nuanced view of their students' strengths, challenges, and opportunities for growth.
Teachers can use this information to inform their instructional strategies, differentiate their teaching approaches, and provide targeted support to individual students. For example, if a student consistently demonstrates a particular cognitive bias, the teacher may design lessons or activities that explicitly address and counteract that bias.
It's important to note that the back of the card is visible only to teachers and not to students. This is to ensure that students receive appropriate feedback for their developmental stage and avoid overwhelming them with too much information. Teachers can use their professional judgment to determine which insights from the back of the card to share with students and how to frame that feedback in a constructive and motivating way.
Overall, the back of the card in Mirror is a powerful tool for data-driven instruction and personalized learning. By providing teachers with a comprehensive view of their students' cognitive, social-emotional, and developmental strengths and challenges, Mirror empowers them to make informed decisions and create learning experiences that truly meet the needs of each individual student.
Emergency Alert in Mirror
To ensure a secure and supportive environment, we have implemented the Emergency Alert feature. This alert system is designed to flag any emergency situation that requires immediate attention from a teacher or adult. Here’s everything you need to know about it:
What is an Emergency Alert?
An Emergency Alert in Mirror is a notification system that highlights critical situations needing urgent intervention. When the system identifies such an event, it automatically sends an email to the account owner and displays an alert on the dashboard. This dual notification system ensures that the necessary parties are promptly informed and can take immediate action.
What Triggers an Emergency Alert?
The Emergency Alert system is activated by any behavior or conduct that poses a risk of harm physically, emotionally, or psychologically to oneself or others. Examples of emergency situations include, but are not limited to:
- Self-Harm or Suicide Mentions: Any indication or mention of self-harm or suicide.
- Physical Violence: Actions or threats that involve physical harm or violence.
- Verbal Abuse: Use of harsh or harmful language intended to hurt or demean.
- Intimidation and Coercion: Attempts to manipulate or control someone through fear or force.
- Bullying and Harassment: Repeated and deliberate actions aimed at harming another individual or group.
- Any Behavior Seeking to Dominate or Control Others: Any conduct that aims to overpower or oppress others against their will.
For further learning: article on student group types and adult group types. Please keep in mind that different information will be visible for you, your colleagues, and your students depending on which group type you select as a Group Manager.
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