Understanding the Heat Map

Hi, it’s Jacob here.

In the last few videos, we’ve been looking at creating assignments and sharing with our learners - which up until now is stuff that you can do in a paper exercise book. Where Magma really comes into its own is with the data - and all of the tools built in to help us understand and, most importantly, action that data to support our learners.

We’re going to start today by looking at the heat map. You can get onto this view simply by tapping onto an assignment. Here I’ve got an old SATs paper from 2023, and when I open that up, I’m immediately greeted by this selection of red, orange, and green squares. This is the heat map.

As well as the colours, we’ve also got numbers on some of those squares - that’s the number of attempts a student took before they answered the question correctly or before they chose to move on. I can tap onto any of these squares - so perhaps Amara on Question 2 - and you can see straight away the working out that that student has done. I haven’t got to go and collect their book from the cupboard - it’s just there on my iPad.

I can even go back between the two different solutions this student offered. I can then simply tap the Heat Map button at the top and go on to another student and another question.

So let’s have a look at Question 3 and we’ll look at how Jamal approached this problem. Again, I’ve got two different solutions and I can toggle between them at the bottom. But let’s go to this solution here. I’d really love to know how this student got to this answer - what was their process?

So, all I need to do is invent a time machine and go back in time and sit next to the student as they’re working out the problem. Or - I could just press Play in the bottom-right-hand corner, which probably is more feasible in the scope of this video.

When I press Play, I can see every single mark that student has made in the question, and I can follow their journey from beginning to end. This simple button honestly blows my mind. It now means - for the first time - that we can actually see what the student was doing in real time, and we can understand exactly which bits were working well and which bits they were struggling on.

But we’re not done yet. On some of the problems on this test paper, we can see that a lot of students struggled to get it correct or they took multiple attempts. At the very top, there’s a little tiny red light on one of the questions - that means there’s a common misconception that I, as the teacher, should be addressing.

If I tap onto that question number, I can then see my whole class’s solutions in one go. Of course, I can scroll through these, I can tap onto individual ones and play them back - but actually, on this left-hand side panel, it can tell me the common misconception. I can press on Show and it will just show me the students who’ve got it wrong, but who have all got to the same wrong answer.

This is such a clear indicator that these students need a little bit more guidance and support to ensure they’re using the correct method to get to the answer they need. Because I can see their working on the screen, I can go through exactly what they’ve done wrong and really help them get to the correct answer.

If I wanted to, I could use this screen to help me in that intervention group. But we might not want to show the student names of those who got the wrong answers. Luckily, we can simply tap on the Anonymise button on the top toolbar. Now, you can’t see any student names.

With anonymous mode turned on, when I go back to the whole heat map, you can see the names have been hidden as well. This makes it a really good tool to have on the board during the lesson - so you can see the work that people are doing and who’s perhaps trailing behind a little bit.

We can also hide the results so students can’t see if they got the answer correct or incorrect. This is really handy if you’ve got one student who’s going miles ahead - and they know it - so they’re watching themselves on the board going: green, green, green, red. If you anonymise the answers, that student can’t do that anymore, and they won’t know how they’re getting on until the end of the quiz.

Of course, we’ve looked at all the answers to one particular question, but we can look at all the answers a student’s given to the whole paper as well - simply by tapping onto their name on the left-hand side. I’ll tap onto William’s name here, and now I can see every answer he’s given to that practice SATs paper - as easily as that.

And of course, Magma’s marked the paper for me - which saves hours of work. I can tap onto any question and press Play to watch that answer being solved before my eyes.

So, the heat map is an incredibly valuable tool. In fact, there’s so much to cover, I’m doing a second video. Make sure you check that one out as well, where we dive deeper into the heat map.

Go and explore the heat map on your device now - I’ll grab a quick coffee and meet you in the next video shortly. I’ll see you there.