World of Math -- How can we replace or recreate it?

Hi LN,

Thanks for sharing this feedback!

If you could share some specific things that you liked about the World of Math mission as well as some specific features that you would like to see added to the site, I'd be more than happy to share that with our product team for further consideration!

I know a "replacement" version of the World of Math mission was something that was discussed a while ago and is still on our wishlist, so we'd love to add your ideas to that discussion for when we revisit this in the future.

Thanks again!

For me the biggest draw was the visual representation of all of Math in a single place, and watching the little blocks turn darker when you mastered something. It was satisfying seeing the whole thing start to turn darker as you progressed. I don't have that now and it's like meh, why even bother. 

I don't know why that visual system was such a huge motivator, but now I really don't feel like clicking on any course. It's just not the same. 

Totally agree.  You can't see the whole picture anywhere now and it's just a frustrating waste of time...

Evan Lewis, What I liked best about The World Of Math was its Mission Mastery system. In order to get mastery of a subject, you didn't have to get 100% on a Unit Test of at least 9 questions/problems. And if new skills were added, you didn't have to take a whole Unit Test of at least 9 questions/problems all over again, risking the loss of mastery in ones already mastered. With The World of Math, mastery problems usually came in 6-question intervals, and missing one did not affect mastery of the other 5.

Rather than scrapping The World Of Math, I would have loved to have seen The World Of Science, The World of Art History, etc.

Khan academy lost a big part of it's soul the day the knowledge map went dark. #SADFACE

That's how I feel about it.

It used to be very "game-ified" to learn the math modules.  It was just like the upgrade-tech-trees in some popular computer games, where one character-skill unlocks higher ones.  Learners naturally relate to this kind of "level up" experience.

You could plainly see your foundational progress and what math skills were pre-reqs for higher skills and work your way up to more advanced topics.  That's what differentiated Khan academy from other sites imho.  The Khan math interface was so clean and elegant and engaging, with high quality content.

Now the module-content is still high quality but just feels haphazardly "dumped out there" in lists.  Yes it's organized according to subject or grade level and it all has stats out the wahzoo, but that's just super boring and not engaging anymore #yawn. 

...and sorry Khan, but these days one can find module content by grade almost anywhere on the web....and since Khan just plopped the module content out there in buckets like everyone else does it's no longer special so I resorted to just watching a bunch of semi-random youtube math videos instead of logging on here.

You've got awesome content.  Make the interface fun and engaging again because right now it's not anymore.

P.S. Ditto Evan:

"Rather than scrapping The World Of Math, I would have loved to have seen The World Of Science, The World of Art History, etc."

A perfect example is how they organized the "Civilization tech tree".  Imagine something similar to that except with math modules and learning content! 

I think a difficulty in adding the world of math is sorting. Like it has been said, it is very structured and standard right now, and for me personally it's similar enough to the textbook.

I also think it would be problematic this way to put World of Math (WoM) because then it'd also be sorted by grade in the lesson area. It would need some sort of innovative sorting that isn't a huge list in order (although again, adding back WoM like this already lets you see your percentage for the whole course, which is a positive).

This is where missions came in. I'd think of it more like the youtube algorithm where:

A. You can choose a lesson on your own from the small menu of cubes

B. An algorithm somehow finds things that you will probably enjoy learning next and gives it to your feed as a personalized recommendation. This is the problem with the new codebase, since that is probably hard to move/manage. This is also the fundamental part of missions and WoM for me, and in WoM it could choose random things from random grades all somehow slightly connected.

C. Some outside source decides to push something for you (My first two years on KA had me recieve teacher recommendations for what my teacher thought I would be interested in next. The difference between this and assignments is that you can ignore anything including what you marked as "do later" and also anything from the feed, and also remove it from the list)

I'm not sure how KA would manage to do something as complicated again without putting missions back (a welcome surprise), but maybe if the team thinks about mixing up the lessons. I'd have to think about it too.

Maybe have the large list on the left in small and have a whole topic on the right where you can move along in a grade but after you complete a task there's a button that takes you to more on the same subtopic, even taking you across grade levels to finish a rabbit hole, as well as buttons to take you to adjacent subtopics (in the same grade and at an arbitrary starting point for that subtopic) (especially if they go to a different topic while being related?). If you actually finish a topic then it can randomize some starting points for new topics while prioritizing some related topics for the list (same with subtopics actually to let us jump around, or even show this on a bar on the side all the time). This would be actually random so that you don't need to store any personalization data if you did for missions! It should use data stored for the progress and otherwise knowing what task was just finished.

And just like that, I've come up with a grand plan. Maybe this should be done for normal grades too.

My plan didn't comment on quizzes and course tests. I do personally prefer having solely mastery challenges and the np/practiced/lvl1/lvl2/mastered levels from missions, and they feel less formal and standard to me.

Thank you Carol! I'm glad thoughts are being heard. =D

A note on the all education part (I don't have reactions to the GO part), I think having this as more exceptional support for math doesn't necessarily hinder the other subjects unless the team is afraid of the other subject users starting to ask for this too. =]

The thing I miss about The World of Math is my ability to do all of Khan Academy in one place. It gave me mastery challenges almost exclusively for topics that were easy for me, but then also gave me the full tasks for topics that were new or tough. Therefore, I could do the entirety of Khan Academy by always just doing the first line at the top of the page on The World of Math. Catching up with what I haven't done in Khan Academy is just too hard now, and I end up repeating things that don't need to be repeated, plus for someone who has finished The World of Math multiple times, it can be VERY boring to do really anything below a certain level, and the repetition can be a lot to handle, so I find that convincing myself to do work on Khan Academy is a real chore and bore without The World of Math.

I found the World of Math beautiful. It was an incredible way to view math as a wonderful interconnected space, where I was further down some branches than others. It was motivating and encouraging. As a math teacher, I really miss it.

I miss world of math as well. It wasn't perfect, but it was a great overview. It was also a motivating visualization of progress. 

LN I'm ready to make something like this! If anyone's working on this, I'm happy to help; if not, I'm happy to pick up where y'all left off!

Kae Regarding this comment, any chance you made any progress or have the data?

MB Looks like you have the data, judging by this comment? I'd love to have access :)