Teachers -- what do you think of the changes in Khan Academy Reimagined?

Mr Steve, Vandenberg.Mr, Varghese Alexander, @Mr. Filipe, MBMD, 

Would any of you like to add feedback about how KA Reimagined makes things better or worse for classroom teaching?

It's killing me and my team of seven teachers---I'm ready to pay for a subscription so that we can at least see class percentages easily for a course and a unit AND quickly see which questions students get wrong most on an assignment without having to use a 65 inch screen and scrolling through all the questions randomly offered.

Dear Janice Holz,

Yes, I'd love to provide feedback. As a Khan Ambassador (nearly since the program's inception), I truly care about this website and I share what I share for the best of the Khan community, its developers, its teachers, and most importantly its student users.

Due to the inability to see "birds-eye" status of students' progress, it is now ten times harder to monitor student progress. I've been using Khan Academy for 10 years now with *massive* learning growth for my students (typically 300% to 400% of expected CA state test cohort growth per year every year for the past decade. In fact, I was the very first teacher that Sal Khan himself interviewed on his live daily web show (back during the pandemic)), so I know pretty well how to make the KA resources & website work toward huge effectiveness for students.

However, with the new KA Reimagined format (with no opportunity to opt out & revert to the "old view"), it is **extremely** difficult and highly **time consuming** to see who needs help on which units and which skills. I teach 6th grade (and this year also 5th grade), and for 10 years I've assigned literally all **MASTERY LEARNING** coursework for grades Early Math (K-2) through Grade 6, which left me essentially 7 courses of progress to monitor, which took about 1-2 hours every weekend to update myself on every kids' progress in detail.

However, now that I can only look in at *Unit* Progress, and that only through a .CSV file download **PER UNIT**, I've gone from about 1-2 hours of progress monitoring work per weekend to 4-5 hours of work per weekend, AND I finish with truly FAR LESS clarity of which kids need help on what.

I'm now having to go back in and check in on *every* *single* *unit* from Early Math thru 6th (and yes, half my students start that low), which means about 8 to10 times as much work every week. This is *extremely* time consuming and *extremely* inefficient. I don't mind the all-new look & features of KA Reimagined (although the KhanMigo character is quite a bit juvenile for Middle Schoolers & above). They aren't so bad. But the inefficiencies caused by removing course progress overviews for teachers (and for students, BTW) is **extremely** devastating to this website's effectiveness.

Varghese Alexander,

So if you give KA money, you can get back some of the functions you used to get for free?  

Is KA Reimagined partially a money grab?

(BTW, I found it interesting that KA pays about 12 employees over a quarter million dollars annually each for 40 hrs/week of work.  Then they nickel & dime teachers & school districts?!)

Pleaseeee bring back the old interface! My team is genuinely struggling. The students don’t like it. It’s all counterintuitive, just made things much harder for everyone. Sometimes simple is gold, this is one of the times. Thank you for starting this thread! Hoping it gets more traction!

Additional comments, as an addendum to my initial post above:

All of my Students AND Parents AND every Teacher I work with who heavily uses Khan Academy (about 15 teachers at my school sight alone) all have a VERY difficult time finding their way to work on what they'd like to on the new Khan Reimagined experience. It's not due to a lack of familiarity with the new format. It's clearly due to the absolute difficulty and non-intuitive user interface. They all (students, parents, and teachers) find the new interface HIGHLY frustrating and non-transparent. The old system is *vastly* superior and is already missed as students, parents & teachers feel like they are treading in mud with no clarity as to where they are and where they are going. There is *SO* much power & motivation with the old "birds-eye" view of course & unit progress, both for teachers (class-wide) AND students (individual immediate course-level progress transparency). Student empowerment, self-agency, motivation and self-selected pathways are all nearly extinguished as a result. Students can *NOT* see the big picture, so they lose motivation to keep going, as there is literally no end in sight. This is nearly an educational death sentence for kids who already begin the year VERY far behind (on average 3+ years behind at the start of the year, but nearly everyone catches up under the old system by the end of the year!).

Under the old system, I could keep my students going because they could see the end (of the entire course) in sight, even though getting there will be MONTHS away (in May/June). But now that they literally see *NO* end (of each course I assign), a HUGE piece of motivation is gone forever, making working till May/June a nearly impossible goal for an average student.

Still more comments:

I'm trying to see how my students are doing on their assignments, and I'm utterly overwhelmed trying to manage the 70+ assignments that I'm now forced to seperately monitor & update on a regular basis, instead of the **ONLY** 7 scores I used to have to monitor (Early Math thru 6th Grade). Think of that: Instead of 7, now it's **70**+!!! I don't have time for 10x's the work & effort to stay on top of all my students' progress & point of need for help! I literally have NO CLUE how my class is doing now and neither do I have the Time to wade through the weeds of column after column after column of 70+ units'-worth of .CSV files to know what in the world is going on with my class.

I am SO distraught & devastated by these changes, and I speak as a teacher who for TEN YEARS has effectively motivated & coached my class, all with (the old format of) Khan Academy, toward 300% to 400%+ Growth on their CA State Tests! That was LIFE CHANGING GROWTH results for my 6th graders, for a DECADE!!! I literally don't know how I can ever continue that growth any longer under the new & vastly inferior KA Reimagined Format.

Also: I cannot search assignments by course. I have to have the unit names memorized. And with 70+ Units to keep track of, this is nigh impossible.

I've been using Khan in my classes for the last 8 years, and this change has now taken away the students' ability to see their scores on the assignments they turn in. This makes it almost not usable for me as a homework/extra help tool. I hope they add in a column for scores under the completed assignments tab so I can continue to use Khan otherwise, I will have to find another alternative :(

@JaniceHolz thank you for starting this thread, I hope it does get more attention.

Please bring back the old layout.

I have been using khan academy as an external source fore my class for over 4 years now and I have never had any issues with it. But this new interface really gets in the way of my teaching.

First of all - the energy points/badges.
My class used to love the energy points system and badges. They would constantly talk about who had the most and would always try competing for the best badges. I didn’t mind as it kept them motivated into completing the tasks I set them. Now seeing them go away just leaves them with the gem system, that, in my opinion, honestly just looks like it was made for 2nd grade. Isn’t that what khan academy kids is made for? Why put all of that into this app? Yes, I understand that customising your own avatar/khanmingo with accessories can be fun for many children, but there are people using this website as a student that aren’t ‘kids’. And erasing their hard-earned badges and energy points just feels like a waste.

2 - Not being able to see my class’ scores
How am I supposed to see how my class is doing on their tasks? How do I know that they aren’t struggling with anything? One of the main reasons I used to love khan academy was because of the accessibility over my children’s scores. Now, it is very difficult to do this and I do hope khan academy fixes this problem. My school does not use any subscriptions on khan academy and is not willing to unless it is necessary and the only possible thing we can do.

Lastly - removing the questions on the videos
The questions feature under the videos was quite nice, until they removed it. It was very helpful when my students had questions on a question or video they had. If khan academy wants users to ask questions on khanmingo, I would just like to mention that not all users have khanmingo enabled. In my opinion, I think khan academy is just taking this as an opportunity for people to get a district subscription. Like I said, my school doesn’t have a subscription and a lot of other schools don’t. Please take this into mind, khan academy.

Khan academy is a great source of education and I love how it’s free but it’s just this new interface that bugs me. It’s also interesting how they said that they listened to teachers, yet I still haven’t seen a single post about anyone who likes the new update.

- 19.08.26

Been using KA for several years, but I don’t think I will be any more. The new interface is a nightmare. Too bad … it was a good run, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. I’ll check back every once in a while to see if the old format makes a comeback.

I agree with everything being said here. I have used it in my classroom as well as for individual students. I work at an educational non profit that supports first generation students on their way to college. This new layout makes it much harder for me track what they are doing and to assign what they need. As a teacher/coach this new format is terrible. 

I would love an option for teachers to go back to the old format.

Also, I did request khan academy to add an option where you could choose which layout you preferred so it would help people that were really struggling with this new update. I haven’t heard back from them and It has been 3 weeks now and nothing has changed.

I made the same request, Ash. Their support informed me there was no way to access the old layout and switch to it. 

PLEASE, please bring back the the old interface!!! The update is so hard to navigate for me and my students. Students are not able to track to see their scores and what they need to go back and "try again" on.  I've been using KA in my classroom for 10 years now and it has helped me target specific skills for my students. I am no longer able to track this and help them easily.