How PushPad Works
Last Updated: September 19, 2026 · PushPad has been in active development since January 2026, see our Terms of Service
1. Atomic Lesson Pad Structure
A lesson pad is a single, self-contained instructional unit built around one concept, made up of a fixed sequence of sections. A subset of sections are gradable and combine to produce the pad's overall mastery score; other sections are formative practice and do not count toward that score. Each pad is stored once and referenced wherever it is used, rather than duplicated per course or per learner, so one pad can be reused across multiple courses and remains a single source of truth when sold on the marketplace.
2. Per-Learner Independent Assignment Copies
Educators author courses, units, and lessons as reusable templates. When an educator assigns content to a learner, PushPad creates an independent copy of that content scoped to just that learner. Later edits to the educator's source template do not retroactively change a learner's already-issued assignment, and each learner's progress and any later adjustments to their path are tracked entirely within their own copy, isolated from every other learner assigned from the same source.
3. Normalized, Weighted Mastery Scoring
Each gradable section of a pad is scored on its own point scale and then normalized to a common percentage before being combined into the pad's overall mastery score. This decouples a section's raw point total (which can vary between pads) from how much it contributes to that score, so sections with very different raw point totals still contribute proportionally rather than letting raw point counts silently determine importance. Separately, when several pads roll up into a lesson or unit grade, each pad can carry its own configurable weight in that rollup. Mastery is computed server-side from the pad's stored content and the learner's submitted answers at grading time; a client cannot supply or influence its own score directly.
4. Mastery-Gated Sequential Unlock
Each pad in a learner's assigned path has a mastery threshold. The next pad in sequence becomes available only once the learner's best recorded score on the current pad meets that threshold, or an educator explicitly unlocks it for that learner. A learner may retry a pad that falls short of the threshold; each retry is recorded as a new, separate attempt rather than overwriting the previous one, preserving a full history an educator can review even after a later successful attempt.
5. Educator-Approved Adaptive Routing
When a learner's score on a pad falls below its mastery threshold, PushPad flags that pad for the educator's review rather than automatically changing the learner's assigned path. The educator is shown relevant candidate content drawn from their own material to consider adding. PushPad never inserts, removes, or reorders a learner's path without that explicit educator action, and any change made this way affects only that one learner's copy, never the source template or any other learner's assigned path, with a record kept of what changed and why.
6. Marketplace Listings As Frozen Snapshots
When an educator publishes a pad to the marketplace, PushPad captures the pad's content as it exists at that moment, separately from the pad's live, still-editable source. A buyer's purchase is a copy of that captured snapshot. Later edits the original creator makes to their live pad do not alter a snapshot that has already been listed or purchased, so a buyer's copy stays exactly what was represented at the time of purchase.
Publication Note
This page describes mechanisms implemented in the PushPad platform as of the date above and is maintained as an accurate, current record. It is not edited to retroactively change what was disclosed as of a given date; material changes are captured by updating the date above, not by silently rewriting prior disclosures.