Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers

I agree with you, Lin. I had planned to review for the SAT, but since the curriculum was a bit over-my-level, I couldn't get on. Also, most people don't bother to answer the SAT questions.

True.

Right now there are two people answering questions on the SAT section, so I think it's good for now...

Yeah, but I think we should have a call for action to all SAT students to try to help out others as much as they can. I'm only in 8th grade and was doing the SAT practices for fun and . . . practice, but for people who are really doing it, they need help and stuff.

I agree Lin. I'm doing any SAT, but next time I do algebra I'll make sure to help somebody. The way KA sets it up though it doesn't go to the lesson page but your own personal learning videos and progress. Some people make it there goal to help, and I'll be making it mine in the future. Thanks for pointing this out. Glad to see you again. 

Where are you from. Your name indicated Asia to me, but correct me if I'm wrong. Oh and you probably have better English than me. I'm a east Texas boy and have an accent and don't always say thing right. 😉

@Starlight

Yeah, that's true. I think for the SAT there should be some expert SAT teachers to answer the questions.

@Ethan

I prefer to keep my nationality private. :)

Lin, I totally agree with you. When you ask question in the pre-algebra section almost nobody answers. It is extremely frustrating to have no one answer your question. As you said above, with no one to answer your question you are stuck and don't know how to answer a problem (or something like that). Lin, I think that because you posted this, so many more people will try to answer each others questions

To everyone who is reading this comment, whenever you see a question that you might be able to answer, help the someone, and answer it. To you it might not make a difference, but to the other person it could be huge. My friends, don't be afraid to help.

This is a really tricky one for Khan Academy to do anything about. What you want basically can't be automated and the entire premise of Khan Academy is to automate as much as possible of maths learning (and other subjects now). They can't afford to employ human tutors to help on the boards.

Peer support can only get you so far. Teaching requires skills that most people using Khan Academy don't have, including a deep understanding of the content itself. Other students, no matter how motivated, are still limited in what they can do to help. There might be some merit in asking students to help in forums for content 3+ years below what they are currently working on but many are too busy working on their own learning to want to do this.

Sorry I can't provide a solution, but hopefully this helps you understand why this is likely to be a problem until teaching is automated.

I agree on this. Although I only use the programming course, there are a lot of un-answered questions ordered by time asked. Some are at the very bottom and nearly impossible to reach. I suggest adding an unanswered question searcher.

@chris.heddles
I'm then totally against the process of automating learning on KA. Right now what KA offers is bunch of videos which could be found on YouTube, practice questions that can be found in any textbooks (you can also search them up online) and some kind of a "studying plan" which isn't very hard to do by ourselves.
If a few teachers checked out several questions I'm sure it'd make a great difference. After all, many of these questions are unrelated and/or unhelpful. Also, an easier way to solve this is to have more discussion moderators who can delete unhelpful questions so useful ones don't get buried by unnecessary spam.

Because I mainly use Khan Academy through the iPad app, I don't have access to answering questions on the videos. If I did, I'd probably be able to answer some of them, although by "answering", I mean by starting off with one hint and then giving more hints if the original poster is still stuck.

Sometimes, people ask math/maths questions here, in the Support Community. If no one else has answered it yet, I will take a stab at answering it myself, but again, I start with a hint. It's somewhat frustrating to me when someone else has already stepped in and given the full answer, without letting the original poster get a hint and try going further by himself/herself.

@Lin Gh.

I think the key here is to understand the limitations of the Khan Academy platform then accept and work within them. As you say, Khan Academy is basically a glorified textbook although it has some key advantages over a traditional paper textbook:

• nearly limitless practice questions for each skill (most textbooks have limited questions)
• automatic marking
• instant feedback of correctness of responses
• hints available as partial solutions rather than the whole solution, which is the only option in most printed texts.
• "forced honesty" where you can't pretend to yourself that you understand something when you look at the answer
• automatic data collection across multiple students (essential for me as a teacher to support my students)
• Ability to do questions in a random sequence through the mastery challenges rather than all in a predictable pattern from a textbook
• Free (most textbooks cost money)
• All levels available in one spot (it would take many textbooks to cover this range of content)

As long as you accept that it can't do "teaching" as most of us define it, Khan Academy is a great practice tool.

I agree that it would be great if a few teachers could drop by the discussion forums. The trouble is that most of us don't have the time to answer questions all day on the internet and Khan Academy is unlikely to hire any of us to do it as a job.

I'm not saying Khan Academy is bad, or not useful. I was just trying to say that Khan Academy should do something about questions and discussions. I've seen many hurtful answers on Khan Academy (starting from "ur stupid"), and it'd be nice if there were more moderators to make sure that users don't abuse the question section.

P.S. KA doesn't have nearly limitless practice questions. More often than not, I see the same question pop up, or sometimes the question itself appears again, with only numbers (and maybe names) changed.

You're right, Lin. Once, I was stuck on inequalities and because I find it easier to do the working on a paper with a pencil instead of the scratchpad, I managed to get 20 problems down with their correct answers. Then, the same problems started popping up again, so I had basically made myself an answer sheet ;) Other than this, KA is great!

It's a great point and should for be communicated. 

I would agree with you, Lin, that there aren't that many people out in the community that help and contribute to the community by answering questions. I do, however, know that there are some people out there who have no idea that there is by any means any community section in all courses that allows people to browse and answer questions. 

Then there are the people who know that there are questions that are in the Community Questions area but doesn't respond due to possibly being told they're wrong by another user. Answering questions may be a little embarrassing or some people are just too shy to answer questions in fear of getting it wrong or they don't have a good enough of an answer.

I would ask the Guardians or someone that works for KA that's in a relatively high position to begin asking people to answer questions through the Notifications tab. I personally help evaluate programs when Khan Academy leaves a notification (and I'd assume it goes to everyone who's taking that course) and didn't know how to get there until I got the notification. Perhaps if someone left a message for whatever course everyone's taking and everyone clicks that notification, they'll be sent to the Community tab and can learn how to answer questions though.

@King

That's a good idea! :) It actually took a while for me to find the Community Discussions section.

@Lin,

Perhaps there is a way to get out word to people about this issue and perhaps try to get people to help through the Community Questions? We can tell people through Subscription pages... 

I agree. I am in junior high,and SAT isn't my skill level. I have made s similar post,but it was concerning the Computer Programming Discussions.

I agree with Lin and most comments here, everyone has made good points and it's great to see the feedback and discussion!

Right now the community questions aren't very visible or easy to locate, especially for an entire course, nor are they setup to attract people to answer a question, since only the oldest, already answered, most voted questions are at the top and shown first, instead of say all the unanswered questions. This alone has an impact, humans are lazy and many won't click a button to read other questions.

My recommendation to KA regarding the lack of folks answering questions would be to promote the community questions area with more links to them throughout the site, and maybe add some new incentives for folks to spend some time answering, like more badges or points (for votes gained on their high quality answers). I'd say this would be the easiest option to help improve the lack of activity, however it would require more moderation by Guardians, who are already stretched pretty thin as far as I'm aware. A few links added in more prominent areas of the site, plus using occasional notifications (or smart ones, sent out when there are too many unanswered questions) like King Studios suggested. This alone would probably handle the problems we're seeing. An unanswered questions tab under videos and such would be nice as well.

Another possibility, though unlikely to happen, is designing a whole new concept of peer support, where all the questions across the site from all subjects were put on a single page, with tabs separating the subjects and options to filter them. It'd be quite convenient to use, plus new badges could be added, points could be earned, or even new "status" as a top contributor could add incentive. This would take a lot of work by the small team they have, so I wouldn't expect this from them for at least a year, if they even decide to build something like it. Maybe I'll build something like this but on my own website integrated with KA, but that's a big maybe, we'll see. :)

Overall, I don't think the community question areas have ever really been a big priority to the KA team, they've existed for many years but have rarely changed, and I can't imagine it gaining priority unless either user feedback for change increased or they did research and wanted to invest more in this area to improve the site.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, I'll try to spread this post and get more folks to add their thoughts!

@Jett Burns, One way to open the community questions area is to make it available on the apps. The app video interface has been changed to look a lot like the lesson pages on the website. I hope this is a forerunner of sticking the community questions there.

@Jett Burns:

I totally agree with you! Love your ideas :)

@Jett Burns

Sorry if I'm reopening a dead discussion, but I only saw your response now.

I do agree with your points, but regarding the last sentence... The whole point of this post was to ask Khan Academy to make Discussion areas one of the priorities of their work. Right now the design is heavily worked upon (which is nice), but I believe there are other aspects that need work as well. If we could all understand subjects just by looking at a video or reading a textbook then no one has to go to a school at all (at least at this era). School offers interactivity, group discussions, and teachers who are ready to answer questions asked by students. Of course, I know it's too much to ask of a small team so just throw all of this aside and maybe at least work on moderating inappropriate posts? And again the Khan Academy team decided that all external links should be hidden until checked by a guardian. I don't have a proof but I feel that there are many answers I posted left hidden because of external links (which are all on topic, by the way)... But I'll have to make sure first so forget that. I mean external links are bad and "chat" comments are not helpful, but off-topic, offending comments are even worse. Perhaps choose certain swear or hateful words (like "stupid", I don't see a scenario where the answer needs to use a strong word like that) and make that comment automatically hidden if found?

It's great to see Khan Academy improved as time goes on, but think of this issue as a cake. The decoration on top is wonderful and the baking is great, but it just needs one ingredient. No matter how tasty the cake is, and how many people could eat it with no problem, there's always going to be that missing ingredient, which could be crucial (and in this case it is).

Thank you for taking the time to read my rumblings! :)