sophia critical thinking milestone 3

Sophia’s Test-Taking Guide : Breakdown, Grading, and Tips for Success

Posted on May 02, 2024

By Sophia Learning

Congrats on taking the next step in your educational journey with Sophia! Whether you’re about to start your courses or you’re just signing up, you’re probably curious about the course structure and how we define success at Sophia. 

This guide has all the information you need to understand how Sophia courses work , the types of assessments we use to evaluate your learning, and how they factor into your final grade. Here’s everything you need to know about taking Sophia courses – plus some helpful tips to maximize your success. 

How Is Learning Assessed? 

Sophia’s courses are competency based, which means that rather than based on a defined term or being graded on a curve, you go at your own pace and you’re done if and when you show you’ve met the expectations for each competency.  

Sophia provides a structure that provides you with all the learning material you need, low stakes practice activities to get ready and exams and assignments that allow you to show what you’ve learned. And if you were not successful the first time on an exam or assignment, you have another chance before moving on. 

Sophia offers 60+ courses in a range of subject areas, all with a similar user interface. Many of our courses are designed with a problem-based learning model that includes both theoretical and practical scenarios for in-depth learning. 

Types of Assessments 

Sophia grades are based on three types of assessments that test your mastery of concepts using problem-based learning, summative evaluation, and a project-based deliverable. Here are the types of assessments, how they factor into your grade, and some tips for success:

Challenges 

Sophia courses use a problem-based learning model comprising both theory and practical knowledge to enhance critical thinking. Each Challenge has an average of 5-10 multiple-choice questions focused on real-world application of concepts to demonstrate your understanding. 

Tips for Success 

• Challenges aren’t timed, so you can take as much time as you need. 
• Each Challenge is split with questions on the left side of the screen and lessons to help you answer the questions on the right side of the screen. 
• You have three attempts for each Challenge topic. If you miss the first question, you’ll get a second or third chance until you’re off to the next topic. If you miss all three, you will miss that point. 
• If you do miss a question, look to the bottom of the screen to find the answer and an explanation as to why yours was right or wrong. 
• Challenges aren’t weighted as heavily as other assessments and can be reset once by a Learning Coach to try again. 
• Take the time to make notes on concepts that were difficult or information you may forget. These concepts will be important for the next assessment: Milestones. 

Milestones 

Milestones are summative assessments that test your mastery of the course concepts in a unit. These have a set time limit, which is displayed on your Course Dashboard. At the end of some courses, there is also a Final Milestone that is the culmination of the previous work.  

• All Milestones are open note and open book, so you can access your notes and information from the course during your test.  
• You are allowed to use personal notes to guide your test taking, so be sure to mark down specific lessons, formulas, concepts, and key terms in advance. 
• Practice, practice, practice! There are practice Milestones that you can use to test your knowledge and get more comfortable with test taking on Sophia. You can take practice Milestones as many times as you wish. Many courses also include study tools like flashcards and glossaries of key terms. 
• If a question has you stumped, skip it. You can mark questions to come back to later, ensuring that you use your time wisely. 
• Timed tests like Milestones must be done in one sitting – there is no option to pause the timer. However, if technical difficulties like a crash or freeze affect your test, you can close out Sophia and reload it to continue where you left off. The timer will continue to tick down while you’re reloading, though. 
• If an emergency comes up and you have to step away from your computer, but you have already started your test, you have options. Just contact your Learning Coach when you’re ready to take the test and we can reopen it for you. 
• If you don’t score as well as you’d like, you can retake the Milestone by clicking the Retake button in the top right corner of the Results screen. The higher score of your attempts will be registered in the system. 

Touchstones 

Touchstones are project-based or written assessments that help you apply your mastery of concepts to a real-world problem. They are submitted for manual grading and must be original and unique. You can work on Touchstones at any time, but you must complete all prior assessments before submitting a Touchstone for grading. 

• Read the instructions carefully! These instructions are thoughtfully crafted to be clear and digestible with multiple sections containing key information. Every Touchstone is different, so make sure you read (and reread) the instructions to ensure you understand the expectations. 
• Each Touchstone has a grading rubric with detailed information about the expectations and requirements for an exceptional Touchstone score. Review it to ensure you understand what you’re aiming for. 
• Check the requirements list at the bottom of the instructions. This section has a concise list of important parts of the Touchstone that may be missed, so make sure you can check all the boxes before submitting your assignment for grading. 
• If you have a specific question, contact the Touchstone Team! They are not available via phone, but you can get in touch using the Help Center on the Sophia website. 
• If you need additional help, tutoring is available for some courses with Touchstones. Just click “Access a Tutor” in the top right corner of the course Dashboard to speak with someone directly. 

How Are Assignments Graded? 

Challenges and Milestones are a simple question-and-answer format that automatically register correct and incorrect answers for grading. Milestones carry three times the weight of Challenges for your final score. 

Touchstones are project-based deliverables that are evaluated by expert graders. Your course syllabus shows how much the Touchstone contributes to your overall course grade. 

Finally, several of Sophia’s science courses have a laboratory component, which include Activities in the Labster learning environment. Activities center around a simulated lab scenario with a series of questions to answer, or practical problems to solve. Here too, you have multiple attempts to answer the questions and earn points. You can leave and return to Activities whenever you want, and retakes are unlimited. 

Sophia’s science lab courses are designed to be a complement to the lecture – just like an in-person science course with a lab – for a robust investigation into the concepts in the natural sciences. 

What Happens If I Fail a Sophia Milestone or Sophia Course? 

Even if you studied hard, it’s possible that you may not perform as well as you’d like on every assignment. But with Sophia, you have an option to dust yourself off and try again! You can retake Milestone assessments, resubmit Touchstones, and retake courses for another opportunity to earn a passing grade and grasp the material for your future courses. 

Are You Ready to Excel? 

Now that you know all the ins and outs of Sophia courses, it’s time to put it into action. Get started on your course or try out a course firsthand up to the first assessment. Start your free trial today ! 

Category: Student Success

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3.1: Words of Wisdom- Thinking Critically and Creatively

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• Dave Dillon
• Grossmont College

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Dr. Andrew Robert Baker

Critical and creative thinking skills are perhaps the most fundamental skills involved in making judgments and solving problems. They are some of the most important skills I have ever developed. I use them everyday and continue to work to improve them both.

The ability to think critically about a matter—to analyze a question, situation, or problem down to its most basic parts—is what helps us evaluate the accuracy and truthfulness of statements, claims, and information we read and hear. It is the sharp knife that, when honed, separates fact from fiction, honesty from lies, and the accurate from the misleading. We all use this skill to one degree or another almost every day. For example, we use critical thinking every day as we consider the latest consumer products and why one particular product is the best among its peers. Is it a quality product because a celebrity endorses it? Because a lot of other people may have used it? Because it is made by one company versus another? Or perhaps because it is made in one country or another? These are questions representative of critical thinking.

The academic setting demands more of us in terms of critical thinking than everyday life. It demands that we evaluate information and analyze a myriad of issues. It is the environment where our critical thinking skills can be the difference between success and failure. In this environment we must consider information in an analytical, critical manner. We must ask questions—What is the source of this information? Is this source an expert one and what makes it so? Are there multiple perspectives to consider on an issue? Do multiple sources agree or disagree on an issue? Does quality research substantiate information or opinion? Do I have any personal biases that may affect my consideration of this information? It is only through purposeful, frequent, intentional questioning such as this that we can sharpen our critical thinking skills and improve as students, learners, and researchers. Developing my critical thinking skills over a twenty year period as a student in higher education enabled me to complete a quantitative dissertation, including analyzing research and completing statistical analysis, and earning my Ph.D. in 2014.

While critical thinking analyzes information and roots out the true nature and facets of problems, it is creative thinking that drives progress forward when it comes to solving these problems. Exceptional creative thinkers are people that invent new solutions to existing problems that do not rely on past or current solutions. They are the ones who invent solution C when everyone else is still arguing between A and B. Creative thinking skills involve using strategies to clear the mind so that our thoughts and ideas can transcend the current limitations of a problem and allow us to see beyond barriers that prevent new solutions from being found.

Brainstorming is the simplest example of intentional creative thinking that most people have tried at least once. With the quick generation of many ideas at once we can block-out our brain’s natural tendency to limit our solution-generating abilities so we can access and combine many possible solutions/thoughts and invent new ones. It is sort of like sprinting through a race’s finish line only to find there is new track on the other side and we can keep going, if we choose. As with critical thinking, higher education both demands creative thinking from us and is the perfect place to practice and develop the skill. Everything from word problems in a math class, to opinion or persuasive speeches and papers, call upon our creative thinking skills to generate new solutions and perspectives in response to our professor’s demands. Creative thinking skills ask questions such as—What if? Why not? What else is out there? Can I combine perspectives/solutions? What is something no one else has brought-up? What is being forgotten/ignored? What about ______? It is the opening of doors and options that follows problem-identification.

Consider an assignment that required you to compare two different authors on the topic of education and select and defend one as better. Now add to this scenario that your professor clearly prefers one author over the other. While critical thinking can get you as far as identifying the similarities and differences between these authors and evaluating their merits, it is creative thinking that you must use if you wish to challenge your professor’s opinion and invent new perspectives on the authors that have not previously been considered.

So, what can we do to develop our critical and creative thinking skills? Although many students may dislike it, group work is an excellent way to develop our thinking skills. Many times I have heard from students their disdain for working in groups based on scheduling, varied levels of commitment to the group or project, and personality conflicts too, of course. True—it’s not always easy, but that is why it is so effective. When we work collaboratively on a project or problem we bring many brains to bear on a subject. These different brains will naturally develop varied ways of solving or explaining problems and examining information. To the observant individual we see that this places us in a constant state of back and forth critical/creative thinking modes.

For example, in group work we are simultaneously analyzing information and generating solutions on our own, while challenging other’s analyses/ideas and responding to challenges to our own analyses/ideas. This is part of why students tend to avoid group work—it challenges us as thinkers and forces us to analyze others while defending ourselves, which is not something we are used to or comfortable with as most of our educational experiences involve solo work. Your professors know this—that’s why we assign it—to help you grow as students, learners, and thinkers!

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Foundations of Academic Success: Words of Wisdom. Edited by Thomas Priester. Essay authored by Dr. Andrew Robert Baker. Located at: milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/...nd-creatively/ License: CC BY: Attribution.