Including already Mastered Skills in Mastery Challenges can be demotivating

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Shraddha

January 22, 2019 10:50

In order to master my remaining skills in topics I've become quite comfortable with e.g. Ratio & Proportion, I must complete a Unit Test of 34 questions which includes all of my already mastered skills + what I need to master. However, if I get a few questions wrong on the test I must redo the entire 34 question test again- which can get to be tedious and boring (and hence lead me to create more silly mistakes for I couldn't be bothered to focus on the questions).

I understand doing so gives the student more practice- but if these already mastered skills have become quite easy for the student, then the unmastered skills will remain unmastered if the only way to master them is to go through 34 easy questions again and again (when I am saying "easy", I am only referring to my own context and not otherwise).

I recommend separating the revision of already mastered skills and the gaining of new mastered skills. The system would become more streamlined. If the student fails their revision of their mastered skills, that skill can then be transferred to the content of Unit Test questions so that the student can re-achieve mastery.

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Regina Litman

January 22, 2019 19:12
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I agree with you. This is one reason why I liked the old Mission Mastery system better. In the old system, if a new skill was added, after you did the practice exercise for it, you could go right to the Mission and get this skill tested. Sometimes, to make the Mission exercise have more than one question, questions for skills already mastered in this course or earlier ones were thrown in (and when this happened, getting one of them wrong did cause you to lose mastery, but you could go back in to the Mission and level back up to mastered without getting a whole unit test again).

Retakes of unit tests should mainly consist of problems/questions for skills not yet mastered. The second most annoying thing about the unit tests is that sometimes there are fewer questions than the number of skills the course contains, but the one skill you still need to master is not included in the question set you get on the retake. For example, there are 35 skills and a 34-question unit test, you got one wrong the first time through, and that one skill you missed is the one skill that's left off the retake.
wsimps9

July 31, 2022 22:10
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This is still a problem. I'm working through high school physics as an adult and it's really easy to make a sign error or rounding error which is compounded by some of the answers. One answer which went to 10 places required a precise decimal while most require rounding to two sig figs.

After unit 1 I'm giving up entirely on the scoring system. These gamification metrics can be very motivating for me, but losing points over sign errors when I essentially understand the concept just makes me not care about the points.

Subtracting points is a penalty, please find a penalty-free way to gauge and gamify progress.
Mahesh W

July 02, 2025 05:37
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Looks like folks have this issue for years but no way to mitigate it.

Mastery challenge keeps on repeating skills from first unit even if skills in that unit have been mastered. My kid is no longer interested in doing mastery challenges. Is there any way to contact Khan Academy team to make it cover other units in the course?
Fernando

July 10, 2025 22:07
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Hi Mahesh W,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on how our Mastery Challenge content could be improved.

We'd love to gain a better understanding of your experience. Could you please submit a support request in our Help Center? Here's the link: http://khan.co/KA-support.

Warm regards,

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Including already Mastered Skills in Mastery Challenges can be demotivating

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