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Work Based Learning Guide
Work-Based Learning (WBL) is a framework for assessing real work students do in a school-based
enterprise — actual orders, builds, print runs, job tickets — rather than worksheets. This page is
the teacher's walkthrough. The philosophy and data model are in
Work-Based Learning Internals and the design docs in the main repo
(WBL_Assessment_Framework.md, WBL_Schema_Design.md, WBL_API_Design.md).
Everything here is in the Teacher Portal's Work-Based Learning tab.
Every assessment attaches to a Work Event — one discrete piece of real work. A Work Event is viewed through three lenses at once:
- Hard skills → accumulate into micro-credentials.
- Gross output → weekly QC Spot Checks + a Holistic Call when the job is done.
- Soft skills → dispositional (Persistence, Commitment to Excellence, Academic Curiosity) via a daily Do Now / Exit Slip, and transfer (Application of Previous Knowledge, Extension of Knowledge) via cited claims.
A program owns the curriculum (skills, credentials, phases). A class owns the roster and the gradebook. Keeping student history on the program is what lets a credential survive a section change or a new school year.
- Phase 1 (scoped): structured units. Hard skills taught and assessed. Dispositional soft skills active. Transfer skills dormant.
- Phase 2 (open jobs): the student has earned the prerequisite credentials for independent work. Real jobs. Transfer skills activate and become scored; the Holistic Call becomes the main output measure. Phase is auto-computed from prerequisites, with an instructor override.
Work-Based Learning tab → New Program. Give it a name (e.g. "Apparel Decoration"). You own it. A program can optionally be marked shareable so another teacher can import its catalog.
Catalog sub-tab.
A credential is earned by demonstrating its required skills enough times, on jobs that clear a quality bar. Each credential lists its skills and, per skill, a required number of demonstrations.
- New Credential — add one by hand, set its name and its minimum Holistic tier (the output quality a job must reach for a demonstration on it to count).
- Import CSV — bulk-load credentials and skills. See Importing Micro-Credentials for the format.
Editing a skill's definition creates a new version rather than changing the old one, so a student's past assessments still point at exactly what they were assessed against. A skill version is draft → published → retired. A retired skill keeps its old evidence but blocks new assessment. Each version can carry a list of criteria (the checklist an instructor ticks when assessing it).
Catalog sub-tab → Linked Classes → Link Class.
A class must be linked before:
- its enrolled students see the program on their My Progress page, and
- the Sync Work-Based Learning button appears for it in PowerSchool.
Unlinking a class exits students who have no other linked class in the program — their record is kept, not deleted.
Roster sub-tab → Sync Roster. Enrollment follows the linked classes' rosters; Sync Roster picks up students added since. Advance Pathway Year rolls every enrolled student's pathway year forward at year end.
On the Roster, marking a student Called Out for a date voids an unverified PowerSchool
absence (UNV) on that date so it never docks their attendance-derived Holistic score. Use it when
you know an absence was legitimate but PowerSchool hasn't been updated.
These are program-level settings (in the Catalog / program area):
- Phase 2 prerequisites — the set of credentials a student must earn to auto-advance to Phase 2.
- QC criteria — the objective, measurable checks used in a QC Spot Check (e.g. "part within tolerance," "count passes audit"). Authored per program.
- Holistic tier points — the gradebook percentage each of the four Holistic tiers is worth. The defaults are Not shippable = 0, Rework needed = 50, Meets spec = 85, Exceeds spec = 100; editable per program.
Work Events sub-tab → New Work Event. Give it a title and (optionally) an external reference, description, and open/close dates. Add participants from the roster — a Work Event is a shared job with one row per student on it, so team jobs and multi-week jobs both work.
Made one by mistake? An empty Work Event (no participants) has a Delete button in the list and a Delete Event button on its detail view. Once anyone has been added it can't be deleted — remove the participants first (which itself is only allowed while they have no assessments).
The sub-tab also shows students with no job for a chosen date, grouped by class period, so nobody falls through the cracks.
Open a participant. You have the three lenses:
-
Skills — for each skill in scope, mark the demonstration
mastered/ not, ticking the version's criteria. A demonstration only counts toward a credential when it'smastered, on a Work Event whose Holistic Call reached the credential's minimum tier, and across enough separate events. - QC Spot Check — record results against the program's QC criteria. See rotation below.
- Holistic Call — at job completion, the four-tier judgment on the finished work: Not shippable / Rework needed / Meets spec / Exceeds spec. Informed by the QC history but not averaged from it.
QC Rotation sub-tab. Each student on an active job should get at most one QC Spot Check per calendar week. The rotation list shows who's due, longest-unchecked first. The coverage floor report flags students below the minimum — measured against weeks they actually had an active job, so absences and gaps between jobs don't count as missed coverage.
Skill Checks sub-tab. Credits a skill directly, outside any Work Event — for a standing competency you want to verify across the whole roster at once. Counts as one demonstration toward any credential requiring that skill.
This is the WBL Do Now / Exit Slip, built on Persistence / Commitment to Excellence / Academic Curiosity. Classes not linked to a WBL program get a separate, parallel version on the Gravitas / Dignitas / Pietas framework — see Habits of Work.
Students do these themselves on their My Progress page:
- Do Now at session start: pick one (max two) of Persistence / Commitment to Excellence / Academic Curiosity to focus on.
- Exit Slip at session end: a specific cited reflection tied to that day's work — not "I was persistent," but what happened, the obstacle, the response.
Exit Slips are never edited or resubmitted — that's what keeps them honest. To correct one, you void it (an append-only record; the original is never mutated).
Exit Slips sub-tab (teacher): review pending slips. For each, either:
- Verify / Witness it and assign a 0–4 rating (this rating is what feeds the Habits of Work gradebook score — 0→0, 1→25, 2→50, 3→75, 4→100), or
- Void it (voided slips count as 0 for that day).
Feedback you leave delivers forward, to the student's next check-in — never as an edit to the slip.
On a Work Event, a Phase-2 student can file:
- Application of Previous Knowledge — cites a skill/credential they've already earned and how they used it here.
- Extension of Knowledge — cites a genuinely new capability developed on this job.
You fact-check rather than judge: does the cited prior credential actually exist on their record? Is the "new" skill actually novel? The portal shows a fact-check helper. Verified claims feed the transfer Habits of Work score.
On the PowerSchool section page (section registered and linked to a WBL program), click Sync Work-Based Learning. Pick the WBL program, the Formative / Summative / Habits of Work PowerSchool categories, a due date, and the Work Event / Habits of Work max points. Then use the four independent buttons:
| Button | Creates | Scores |
|---|---|---|
| Sync Skills (Formative) | one assignment per (credential, skill) pair |
100 if satisfied; 0 / blank / excluded per the pair's sync state
|
| Sync Credentials (Summative) | one assignment per credential |
100 if earned; 0 / blank / excluded per state; a credential earned elsewhere is left blank |
| Sync Selected Work Events | one assignment per completed job you tick | Holistic tier % × max points, blended 80/20 with attendance when pulled; only Holistic-Call participants are on the assignment |
| Sync Habits of Work | one assignment per soft skill (all 5), not counted in final grade | dispositional = marking-period rating average; transfer = verified-claim sum, gated on Phase 2 |
In the same panel, each credential (and each of its skills) has a Not Started / In Progress / Due selector:
- Not Started — not synced at all. New items start here.
- In Progress — earners score 100; everyone else is blank (not zeroed). New items auto-promote here the first time any student shows evidence.
- Due — full 0 / 100 rule.
Changing a credential's state cascades to its skills once; each can then be adjusted independently. Selections save immediately, per class.
Pull PowerSchool attendance first (extension → Sync Attendance from PS). Then Work Event scores
blend the Holistic tier 80/20 with the student's attendance ratio for that job's date span. Without
attendance, the raw tier percentage is used. UXT = half day, UNV = absent unless Called Out.
Full grading formulas: Grading Algorithms.