On designing a mastery learning system

This blog post describes what got me interested in mastery learning in the first place: a new learning technology designed to educate everyone.

I propose a wiki-style website where the public can input prerequisite links and chains needed to learn topics, such as learning addition before multiplication. There would be a visual dependency graph of prerequisites, so you can determine what to learn in order to understand X, and the site could also record what you have previously learned.

Each topic would have to be clearly defined as to what needs to be learned. This may be more difficult for certain abstract topics. For instance, learning division may be more definable than learning to draw. However, I believe even these kinds of topics can be divided into a list of things to be learned. How the list of things to be learned are taught, or how they are tested, I cannot fully answer. But when tested, the prerequisite topics should also be included in the test, to ensure that the test taker remembers previously learned topics.

It is probably best to be tested via an oral exam. This allows the exam audience to analyze the student's thought process (which may be different from other students) and decide if the student understands the material required for the topic. The student will only pass if he knows everything required for the chosen topic.