Pacing & Roadmaps

In the dashboard, click the Pacing tab. This is your command center for creating roadmaps, tracking student progress, and monitoring pacing across the class.

The layout has two main areas: a sidebar on the left listing your units and roadmaps, and a primary area on the right showing summary cards, the activity editor, and the progress matrix for whatever roadmap you've selected.

• 1 Summary cards - At-a-glance count of how many students are on track, slightly behind, needing catch-up, or ready for extension. Updates in real time as you record progress.
• 2 Units & Roadmaps sidebar - Your curriculum hierarchy. Each unit (colored left border) contains one or more roadmaps listed in sequence. Click a roadmap to view its activities and progress matrix.

Pacing is organized into two levels:

• Units are the top-level containers. They represent a chunk of your curriculum - a unit, a marking period, or a project arc. Each unit gets its own color and icon in the sidebar.
• Roadmaps live inside units. A roadmap is a single multi-day, multi-assignment progression where new information builds and students need to acquire basic mastery before moving on. Each unit can hold multiple roadmaps that the class works through sequentially.

Why would a unit need more than one roadmap? Consider a unit where the learning has distinct phases that build on each other. Students all need to master one phase before the class moves on to the next, but within each phase they move at their own pace. Roadmaps give you that structure.

For example, a poetry unit might have two roadmaps:

• Roadmap 1: Reading & Vocab - Read Chapter 5, Vocab Practice, Reading Quiz
• Roadmap 2: Analysis & Writing - Annotate a Poem, Compare Two Poems, Write Original Poem, Peer Review

Students self-pace through Roadmap 1. Fast finishers who complete all the core work early don't just sit and wait - they extend their learning by working into Grow and Challenge tier activities on that same topic. Meanwhile, the guardrails flag anyone who falls behind so you can intervene. When the class is ready, everyone moves to Roadmap 2 together.

This is the key idea: roadmaps let fast learners go deeper on a topic rather than just moving ahead, while guardrails prevent anyone from falling too far behind. The class progresses through roadmaps as a group, but within each roadmap, every student owns their pace.

In the sidebar, click "New Unit" to create a unit, then "New Roadmap" to add a roadmap inside it. Give each a descriptive title. You can optionally set:

• Start date / Target end date - Defines the expected timeline for the roadmap
• Description - An optional summary for your own reference
• Unit color and icon - Customize how the unit appears in the sidebar
• Linked mastery objectives - Connect roadmap activities to objectives from the Mastery tab

Activities are the individual tasks students work through. Each activity gets assigned to a tier. The defaults are:

• Learn Must-do - The core work every student needs to complete. PrepPanel tracks on-pace progress for this tier.
• Grow Should-do - Deeper work for students who finish the core. Examples: write a reflection, analyze an additional text.
• Challenge Stretch - Extension for students who are ahead. Examples: creative project, peer teaching.

These tier names, colors, and descriptions are fully customizable. Rename them to match your school's language - "Foundation / Application / Extension," "Essential / Enrichment / Honors," or whatever makes sense for your students.

• 1 Learn column - Core activities with on-pace dates and completion counts. These drive the summary cards and catch-up logic.
• 2 Grow column - Should-do activities for students who've finished the core. No on-pace date needed.
• 3 Challenge column - Stretch work for students who are ahead. Keeps fast finishers engaged with meaningful extension.

Each activity also has a type - Lesson, Practice, Mastery Check, or Project - and can be individually published or hidden from the public tracker.

On-pace dates are the backbone of the self-pacing system. For each core-tier activity, set a date that represents when a student working at a reasonable pace should have completed it.

These aren't hard deadlines - they're checkpoints. PrepPanel uses them to:

• Highlight the current checkpoint so you can see where most students should be right now
• Automatically flag activities as "Catch Up Needed" when the on-pace date passes and a student hasn't finished
• Calculate the summary cards (on track, behind, catch-up, extension)

You only need on-pace dates on your core tier. Higher-tier activities are self-directed, so students reach them whenever they're ready.

The progress matrix is the heart of pacing management. It's a table showing every student (rows) and every activity (columns), with a colored status dot in each cell. Columns are grouped by tier with colored headers.

• 1 Progress matrix - Each dot is one student's status on one activity. Click any cell to update it. Tier headers are color-coded so you can scan by priority level.

The five statuses are:

• Not Started - Student hasn't begun this activity
• In Progress - Student is actively working on it
• Ready for Check - Student is done and wants a mastery check
• Complete - Activity is done and verified
• Catch Up Needed - The on-pace date passed and the student isn't done

Status names and colors are also customizable - rename them or recolor them to match your school's grading language.

At the top of the primary area, four summary cards give you a real-time snapshot of the whole class:

• On Track - Students at or ahead of the current checkpoint. Self-managing well.
• Slightly Behind - Students within the behind threshold (default: 2 activities). A nudge might be enough.
• Catch Up Needed - Students past the threshold. These need direct intervention - a check-in, modified plan, or reteach session.
• Ready for Extension - Students who've completed all core-tier activities and are working on higher tiers.

Below the cards, a meta line shows the current checkpoint - which on-pace activity students should be working on now and what percentage of the class has mastered all core-tier activities.

Students need to see where they are on the roadmap - and update their own progress. The public pacing tracker is an interactive display designed to be projected or shared. Students can tap or click their status dots to update them (e.g., marking "Ready for Check" when they finish an activity), and changes sync back to your dashboard instantly.

• 1 Board header - Shows which unit and roadmap is displayed, plus the date range. The "Now displaying" eyebrow confirms what students are looking at.
• 2 Settings chips and legend - Shows the current privacy mode and a color legend so students can quickly read the matrix.
• 3 Student progress rows - Names show as initials by default (M.J., S.R.). You can switch to full names or anonymous. Students can tap their own status dots to update them, and changes sync to your dashboard in real time.

Launch the tracker from the Pacing tab using "Launch tracker" (same machine) or "Share to display" (generates a room code for any device via WebRTC).

Self-pacing only works if you have guardrails. Without them, students who fall behind can silently slip further and further off track. PrepPanel's guardrail system catches this automatically.

Each roadmap has two guardrail settings:

• Behind threshold (default: 2 activities) - How far past the checkpoint a student can be before they're flagged in the "Catch Up" card
• Auto catch-up alerts (on by default) - When enabled, PrepPanel automatically changes "Not Started" or "In Progress" to "Catch Up Needed" once the on-pace date passes

Here's how auto catch-up works:

1. When an activity's on-pace date passes, PrepPanel checks each student's status
2. If a student is still "Not Started" or "In Progress," their status flips to "Catch Up Needed"
3. The original status is saved behind the scenes - if you push the on-pace date later, PrepPanel restores the original status automatically
4. The summary cards update to reflect the new counts

Self-pacing can feel isolating without positive reinforcement. PrepPanel's celebration badges recognize milestones as students progress through the roadmap.

• Hit Weekly Target - Awarded when a student completes the target number of activities in a given week.
• All Core Complete - Awarded when a student finishes every core-tier activity. The big milestone.
• Ready for Extension - Awarded when a student finishes the core and starts working on higher-tier work.

You can enable or disable individual celebration types in the pacing settings. Badges appear on the public pacing tracker, giving students visible recognition.