Success is not one thing
Ask ten learners what success in a course means and you may get ten answers. One wants a pass mark. Another wants to understand a topic well enough to teach it. A third wants to finish something they once abandoned. For a fourth, success is being able to do a task at work that they could not do before.
When open education is described as “unlocking student success”, the phrase only means something once success has been defined. This article is about that definition: how learners and teachers can decide what they are aiming at, and how they can track it without pretending that numbers capture everything.
Why grades alone fall short
Grades are useful. They are standardized, widely understood and usually already recorded. But they have limits as a measure of success:
- A grade summarizes performance on particular assessments, which may test recall more than understanding or application.
- Two students with the same grade may have reached it in very different ways, one with a lot of effort and prior struggle, the other with little.
- Grades say little about confidence, curiosity or whether a learner will continue studying.
- They reflect the course as designed, so a learner whose goals differ from the course’s goals may succeed on their own terms while earning a modest mark.
None of this means grades should be ignored. It means they are one indicator among several.
Starting from goals
A workable way to define success is to begin with the goal and work backwards. A simple pattern:
- State the goal in plain words. For example, “be able to read a basic research paper” or “complete the unit by the end of term”.
- Break it into things you could observe. What would someone see you doing if the goal were met?
- Choose one or two indicators. Fewer is better; many indicators become a chore.
- Decide when you will check. Weekly, monthly or at the end.
Writing clear learning objectives helps here, since an objective that names an observable action is much easier to check than a vague one. The same approach works for a teacher defining success for a class, and for a learner using open materials with no teacher at all.
Types of indicator
Different goals call for different evidence. Some common types:
| Kind of indicator | Example | What it can miss |
|---|---|---|
| Completion | Finished all units | Whether anything was learned |
| Performance | Quiz score, assignment mark | Understanding beyond the test |
| Demonstration | A project, a piece of writing, a worked solution | Hard to compare across people |
| Self-report | Confidence rating, learning journal | Over- or under-estimates are common |
| Progression | Moved to the next level or course | Many reasons besides learning |
No single row is enough. Combining a performance measure with a piece of demonstrated work, and a short note on how you felt about it, often tells a fuller story than any one alone.
Tracking without overdoing it
Tracking works best when it is light. A short log with the date, what you studied, what you found difficult and one question you still have can be enough. Repeated low-stakes quizzes give a sense of movement; this connects to retrieval practice, where testing yourself is itself a way of learning. Reflection prompts, such as “what would I explain differently now?”, build metacognition skills, the habit of noticing how well you understand something.
Teachers can add other signals: participation, drafts and revisions, and the questions students ask. Records should be used for support rather than ranking, because measures that feel like surveillance can change behavior without improving learning.
Open education and success measures
Open resources add a few specific considerations.
Cost and access as part of the picture. If a student can read the material from the first day instead of waiting to afford a book, the first weeks may go differently. This is plausible, but the size of any effect depends on the setting, and it should be checked rather than assumed.
Self-direction. Many open resources are used independently, so personal indicators matter more than institutional ones. A learner with no formal assessment may need to create their own checks, such as practice problems or an explanation to a friend.
Recognition. Some learners want evidence they can show others. Options such as open badges or portfolios of work can document skills, though whether a particular employer or institution values them varies.
Cautions when tracking success
- Measures shape behavior. If only completion is tracked, people may rush through. If only test scores count, people may study narrowly for the test.
- Numbers can look more precise than they are. A rise from 70 to 74 on a short quiz may reflect an easier set of questions as much as improved understanding.
- Beware of comparison with others. Success for a part-time learner with caring duties may look very different from success for a full-time student.
- Outcomes vary. Open materials do not promise any particular result, and evidence on which approaches work best is mixed.
Putting it together
For a learner, a reasonable approach is to write down a goal, choose a small set of indicators of different types, and review them at a set interval, adjusting the goal if circumstances change. For a teacher, it is to share the definition of success with students, use more than one kind of evidence, and treat the results as information to act on. Success is easier to pursue, and easier to be honest about, once it has been described in terms you can actually check.