Why can't we reset the unit tests/quizzes after messing up? I've been at this for hours and cannot get 100% because it makes me complete the test instead of just being able to start over. How are people not complaining about this more? half the time is spent just typing fake answers to skip through so i can start over. So frustrating. Why haven't they fixed this?
Hi everyone - I’m Kristen and I lead Khan Academy’s Learning Science efforts. I’d like to give you all an update on our thinking around this topic.
As you all know, learning is hard work and it can be hard to stay motivated. Providing digital instruction and practice involves a delicate balance of encouraging persistence through failure while ensuring opportunities for success. We have multiple goals for learners, including:
When we design digital learning experiences, we are often walking a tightrope balancing these goals. We had previously decided against a “restart button” that would allow learners to restart an exercise, quiz, or test after getting something wrong. This was based on the hypothesis that having students continue to work on problems even when they knew they could not level up would reinforce making careful responses and build understanding that getting things wrong is part of learning.
However, we have seen that the lack of such a button really increases frustration with the system, which we know is inversely related to learning outcomes and demotivates learners from working on Khan Academy. Many students are not really learning persistence or getting more practice because, after getting some questions wrong, they speed through the rest so they can start the exercise or test again.
Given these observations, today we are launching a new option for learners to start over in-progress practice exercises, quizzes, and tests. We believe that with this option, learners will still practice persistence through failure (by starting again) but also maintain more motivation on each question they are answering.
We really appreciate your continued feedback on our features and experience. We’d love to hear what you think about this new change over on the community announcement. We will keep listening and improving!
Hello Andrew! My name is Lisa Krueger and I am a Khan Academy Ambassador teaching in Chicago. I am sorry to hear you are so frustrated with the site. Can you please explain what unit test you are referring to and why you have to put in fake answers? I'm sure together we can get the issue resolved. Thank you for posting.
I agree. I like seeing 100% scores. All of the platforms have a lot of bugs that make it nearly impossible to nail 100% on a long test. Lag bugs on tablets, mobile app bugs with the calculator. It makes me want to give up on the app altogether. No one wants to see 97%. It’s like why bother? Either fix all the glitchy problems among all your platforms and devices or allow a simple restart option on long unit tests please.
Hello all! As a teacher I would not want my students to be able to press a button and reset their assessment because that is very counterproductive. I use the data to determine who might need a mini-lesson on a particular topic or skill if everyone keeps resetting their assessment until they get 100% then I never really know what they need to learn. The purpose of Khan Academy is to help users fill in the gaps in their mathematical knowledge not to get a 100% on an assessment but to work through the questions they get wrong and use hints or watch videos to improve their mathematical understanding of a skill. I am sorry I couldn't be of more help but the only way to get the Perseverance Badge is by sticking with it and then finally mastering skills. Please let me know if you have any further questions, comments, or suggestions. Thank you for posting.
I do agree that persistence is key. By providing a reset key you are not bypassing this at all as the individual still has to pass the subject matter in order to get through the test. There is always the progress development tab in which you can view what the student is having issues with. In my opinion having a reset button will help me even further because it reiterates going through the same problems over again thus increasing my overall retention. I still have to answer the same question that I got wrong in order to get that 100%. It would also allow me to not get as frustrated as I do when I make a simple mistake and have to finish the whole test again because I made error in my calculations.
Perhaps add a Restart button and allow its usage as follows:
Adult learners - unconditionally, perhaps controlled by a profile option.
Student learners - parent/teacher/coach/other authority figure sets it up to allow them to use it.
Also, ensure that Restart button, if added, is made a part of the iOS and Android platforms from day one of its implementation on the web version. After all, as others have posted here, errors as a result of unintended input are probably more common in the mobile platforms with that darned handwriting interpreter than they are on the web site!
Please implement this idea. I literally answered a very very simple multiplication question incorrectly because I thought it was an addition symbol (I glanced at it real fast, first time ever trying these placement tests) and now I am stuck learning my shapes. I'm 35 years old. LOL. It was an honest mistake. Please help me restart this placement test.
I just finished a 7-question Calculus practice quiz on my 5th try. I missed exactly one question each of the first 4 times through. Twice, I read the problem wrong, in one case mistaking a < for an =. Another time, I copied the number wrong when I used the color bar tool (or whatever it’s called). Copying the problem wrong has been an issue for me since I was in 4th grade - 56 years ago! The other time, I got too fancy and simplified my answer beyond what was expected. It was a multiple choice exercise, with “None of the above” as one of the choices. Since I didn’t match the correct one exactly, I chose “None of the above” and got it wrong.
I remember that one of my incorrect answers was on the 7th question, another on the 6th, and still another on the 1st. (I don’t remember where one of them was.) It was especially frustrating to get the 7th and the 1st wrong, but getting the 1st wrong was even more frustrating because it meant 6 meaningless questions coming up. This is where I would have loved to have had a restart/reset option. Ironically, there were a few questions where I wasn’t totally sure of the answer but took an educated guess and turned out to be correct. One of these was on the 1st question of my last attempt.
I have another idea regarding the use of the Restart/Reset button. When I redo a practice in which I did not get 100%, I still get points. For example, suppose I am doing a practice exercise in which I get 75 points for each correct answer. It has four questions/problems. Let’s say I get three out of four correct, for a total of 225 points. I personally do not move on from a practice exercise until I get 100, so I then do this one again and do get all four correct, for a total of 300 points. The irony here is that if I had gotten all of them correct the first time through, I would have just gotten 300 points for this practice, but since I wasn’t perfect the first time, I ended up with 525.
SO HERE IS MY IDEA: If someone chooses Restart or Reset, one of the following will happen:
1. They will lose all points (if any) accumulated so far in this practice exercise.
OR
2. They will only earn points above what they accumulated so far in this practice exercise. To illustrate this concept - I get the first problem correct in a seven-question practice exercise but get the second one wrong. I keep the points I got for the first problem. Once I restart/reset, I can get no more than six points in the next practice, even if I get all of them correct.
When I took a seven-problem practice five times, with six correct each of the first four times and finally getting all seven right the fifth time, I earned 31 times the point value of each problem. If I had gotten all seven right the first time through, I would have only earned 7 times the point value.
I totally approve the reset button idea. As I won't leave test unless having made no mistake, I enter wrong answers on all remaining questions after having made a mistake. Boring, frustrating! >< Though I do my learn seriously, the current behavior is a kind of punishment. Please fix this!
I don't intentionally enter wrong answers for the remaining questions (if any), but I do see it as an opportunity to be a little more venturesome with my answers if I am not totally sure of the answer. If it's a multiple choice question, for example, and I have not eliminated all but one of the possibilities, I may choose the one that I don't think is the most likely.
However, I do not want to get a 0% on any quiz, so I don't usually get venturesome until I get at least one correct.
*** New thought on this topic: ***
As a way to appease those who are not totally in favor of adding this option, I have another idea. My new idea is that this option to restart/reset should only appear if the person is not yet past the halfway point. (rounded up for one with an odd number of questions) For example:
4 questions - Available for questions 1-2 but not 3-4
7 questions - Available for questions 1-4 but not 5-7
14 questions - Available for questions 1-7 but not 8-14
I suggest this because I hate getting the first problem wrong in a 7-question practice exercise and then knowing that I have to do six more before having the chance to get 100%. It's also frustrating to get #7 wrong, but at least I don't have to do any more before starting over.
*** One correction from something I posted earlier: ***
I now think that the second (or subsequent) try through a practice exercise earns fewer points per correct answer. Instead of 75 points, I think it's more like 10 or 25.
I totally agree that there should be a restart/reset button for practice and tests. It's very frustrating when trying to get 100% and there is just 1 question you miss. I've been trying to get 100 on a unit test and because of one thing I keep having a bit of trouble with I have to keep doing it over because I miss 1-3 questions. It's so frustrating when I got questions about the other topics correct, but just that one topic keeps causing me to have to redo it. There should be the option to reset/restart the practice and the tests for this reason.
Better yet: Have the unit tests broken down into specific topics that were covered in the unit. Like you have a topic that was covered in the unit and a certain amount of questions on just that topic, then another topic and only questions on that topic, etc. Then you have the ability to just go back and retake only the section(s) where you missed questions. This way if you got all questions regarding a certain topic correct you wouldn't have to keep retaking the test on that topic you could just retake the test on the topic(s) you're having trouble on.
As a student I honestly hate that there isn't a reset thing I hate wasting so much more time going through putting fake answers that take about a minute to type out because I missed one little question, and I wanted 100%. I definitely approve of a restart option rather than wasting study time going through putting fake answers.
As a former educator myself, largely on digital content, online learning platforms must be approached slightly differently to a regular classroom.
The whole idea of sites like Kahn Academy is a comprehensive useful tool to supplement learning in the wider scope. As such it s is far more beneficial and productive to make use of the digital basis to improve the platform for its users.
The Unit tests are there to both test any knowledge so far the student has gained in the course, and also to provide a way to continue the learning process by trial and error.
In this way, many students may, prefer to repeat the tests until they can get the full 100%. At present, this can be hours of time since if a student fails one answer (which may not even be an issue on knowledge but a typo, or (as in my case, the slip of a finger on a tablet, accidentally writing the wrong symbol)) the Test must still be completed before a reattempt at 100% can be made. Failure isn't always due to the lack of knowledge, in fact, in many cases online tests, the mistakes can often be from the use of the UI features and how well they are implemented and accessible. (In my case, attempting tests on a tablet, the special symbols popup is frustratingly badly responsive)
By failing to take advantage of this simple functionality, the users experience is diminished, and can lead to less knowledge obtained in the long run. The option to reset a unit test, gives far better choice to the users and improves learning greatly. There is far more to consider when building online interactive sites then simply offering knowledge.
I am greatly impressed with Kahn Academy, particularly when considering it is all offered for free, over all its an excellent tool for young and old (I myself am an adult re familiarizing myself with the joy of Mathematics). However, as an experienced software developer, there are several niggling issues and bugs that appear now and again and do somewhat detract from the user experience.
The ability to reset long Unit tests in my opinion is a vital and conducive functionality that is sorely missing, and needs vital consideration not only in terms of usability, but also of learning and user experience. I can fully sympathize with those here who are frustrated with the continuous retaking of long unit tests. Lets not forget, these are users who strive for 100% (which Kahn Academy cleverly make very desirable through excellent gamification).
This is something KA can easily implement, unlike the video content etc, and I respectfully also request it's implementation.
I know that Lisa Krueger has taken this issue to an internal forum for Khan Academy staff. Lisa (or anyone else), has there been any indication as to how receptive they have been to this idea? For example, do they think it is a good idea, but it would be difficult to implement technologically?
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