Rising to the Occasion --- DGPE December 2020

Among the many things affected by Covid-19 last year was the peer evaluation system on Khan Academy. About mid December 2020, Khan Academy discontinued the overburdened feedback queue.

However, Khan Academy students still need support, perhaps more than ever!

Over the December holiday we had the pleasure of engaging a group of Khan Academy students in discussions about how to continue helping the KACS community.

These were all experienced evaluators and long time users of the CS features. We spent time checking out how the new system works from a user perspective, identified issues for feedback to Khan Academy, experimented with different ways to give feedback, and created tools to keep track of the Questions queue.

During that time we were able to reach out to 409 students who had asked for, or looked like, they could use programming advice or encouragement.

“There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.” --- Idowu Koyenikan

We'd like to thank those who took the challenge, many of them even before the 'December Special' started. The insights and experiences you have shared will shape how DGPE will be working in the future.

We would also like to mention Lone Ninja, who was not part of this project, but who had already created one of the tools which greatly facilitated keeping track of KACS activity.

Thanks to everyone for all of their hard work, feedback, and dedication to the Khan Academy community!

On behalf of DGPE (Doing Great Project Evaluations),

Evan Lewis, Inger Hohler, Chris Rennick