The Problem

Building 21 provides competency-based professional development to schools and districts. Unlike traditional education, which relies on general assessments, this approach measures a student’s actual mastery of state standards. Because there was no existing software that addressed their specific approach for competency-based grading, Building 21 set out to develop its own platform and Personalized Learning Plans (PLP) but needed the ability to prototype and test dashboard designs and methodologies with actual data on students and families.

Approach & Solution

xSoTec proposed the use of Google Sheets and xSoTec tools to generate pilot student dashboards that captured real competency data from Building 21’s teacher gradebooks. Building 21 could then gauge the efficacy of various dashboard models with real feedback and assess how students and families understood, and were motivated by, the design and data in their PLP. At the same time, Building 21 would be improving their actual grading algorithms and teacher gradebooks. Eventually Building 21 could take what they had learned from these pilots to build a scope of work that could be taken to a traditional developer.

Because Building 21 had been working with xSoTec for many years, they were very comfortable using our tools without the need for xSoTec’s consulting services. They would primarily use three of the tools from xSoTec’s library.

• adminConsole: For easily creating, maintaining and editing thousands of Google Sheet Dashboards at a time.
• copyScripts: For automatically moving data from the Building 21 Teacher Gradebooks and other sources to student dashboards.
• loopSheet: For giving Building 21 the ability to quickly implement custom Google Apps Scripts programs not handled by adminConsole or copyScripts.

How They Are Doing Now

Building 21 has grown into a Competency-Based Charter Network. They are one of the most intensive users of the xSoTec toolset, deploying it to support their Personalized Learning Plans for students at over 55 Schools. Combined, these schools require more than a 100 hours of processing time each night at no additional hosting or processing costs to either Building 21 or their schools.

While they have replaced some original components with their own custom-developed software, Building 21 is continually testing new ideas beyond competency-based grading such as restorative behavior, school climate and much more. With each new idea comes the need for prototyping, piloting and iterating. Looking towards the future, Building 21 expects its use of xSoTec’s tools to only grow. Due to their deep expertise in the xSoTec tools, Building 21 has invested in their own in-house xSoTec Tools Expert so that they can license the toolset rather than requiring xSoTec’s ongoing consulting services.