Update: August 2016 Math Mission Changes

Here's the rest of the linked-to article.  If you have questions, this thread is the best place for them!

Why is Khan Academy making changes to math missions?

We’re always working to improve our math missions. Whether improving existing exercises, adding new exercises, or trimming down a mission to make it more focused, our goal is simple: make it easier for students to learn.

Our calculus mission changes are particularly large, so they deserve special explanation. Our existing calculus missions mix many skills at different difficulty levels into a single learning experience. The new and improved missions are more focused, allowing you to learn and master one concept at a time.

Our statistics mission changes are also significant and worthy of special explanation. Our old mission covered all of statistics from middle school through early college. Our new mission is trimmed down, now focused exclusively on high school statistics. Don't worry, we haven't removed any content from the site. If you're looking for a specific exercise or video, you'll still be able to find it outside the mission.

Other missions changed too, but not as much as calculus and statistics. If you have questions about any changes, let us know in the "Updates" section of the community.

Why is my mission progress percentage changing?

Don’t worry - we haven’t lost track of which exercises you’ve completed. However, we’re adding new exercises to some math missions and removing exercises from others. As a result, your mission progress percentage may change.

Will there be more changes to math missions in the future?

We’re always working to improve our math missions. When we make updates, we'll communicate them as best we can.

I used your probability and statistics to supplement AP Stats. With the scaling back of the P and S, is there going to be something for AP Stats?

@paul We aren't removing any content from the website. You'll still be able to find the more advanced statistics content outside of the high school mission. Also, we're actively developing an AP stats class, which we'll be rolling out over the coming year.

My 2¢. A while back the help center topic titles were changed from 1 or 2 descriptive words to multiword titles that to me are just more confusing than clarifying.

Same with the addition of "High School" in front of subjects or "Review" behind them.  I know it's not Kindergarten Calculus or Statistics. And what if a subject is new to someone and not a review? What is the point?

My students report that they are being asked to complete assignments they have already done after this update was completed?

 If you have questions, this thread is the best place for them!

Laurie, Why do I have to click through each sub-topic within a grade to see which lessons / challenges have been completed? Why does the main Table of Contents on the Explore page not give any indication of one's progress?

I just spent a few hours working with the updated topics in Integral Calculus. I found many errors in the way you reported your answers. Please double check, such as:

- Your answer is exactly the same with my answer, but the system does not accept both.

- In another case, the answers are the same, but the way I type in, even though it is slightly different, but it is perfectly equivalent (just as Sal wrote in his video), but the system rejected the way I typed.

- In another case, your answer is clearly wrong. I reported all of them when doing the problem. Please check them and correct them to avoid frustration for students.

- May be more errors that may not remember all of them....

Thien D Ho

I wish that you will also update the content and topics for the Early Math, which include K, 1st, and 2nd.

I think you should add on enough topics in order to separate Early Math into 3 separated Missions: one for K, one for 1st, and one for 2nd, in order to attract more younger students to Khan Academy.

Also, please make up another College Prep: ACT. Students in the east need ACT much more than SAT.

Thank you for all of your hard work.

Thien Ho

I had students working on a summer assignment who are now freaking out because the quizzes all changed and some they did are not showing up. Is there anyway I can see their progress from before the update so they do not need to repeat skills? I was totally unaware of this update and 2 weeks before school was horrible timing for us. Please reply, my students and I are very frustrated. 

To Timothy Ciampa, for any thing I had done in the past are still there. If you click on View All in the subject page, it will show what a student has done, at what level toward Master, and any thing has not done. All of the new topics will be list as undone. Hope it can help. Thien Ho

Thien D Ho

It would be great if they added some Pre-K level Counting, Comparing, Shapes ,etc as well just to get kids used to the format and get them hooked on basically teaching themselves.

Some of the material in K & 1 could be moved down to Pre-K in my opinion to start with. The main problem is that for the most part they have to be able to read the questions to do the challenges but if there were verbal questions kids could really get a jump on math.

Rhonda, I very much agree with you regarding to the expansion of K to 2. I also think that they should minimize the reading word problem. Otherwise, someone has to sit with the young students, read the problem to them, and provide some explanation. This will destroy the goal of self-learning right at the early stage.

Thien Ho

@Baldelli I'm confident your students are not having to redo any work as a result of these changes. But if you have specific examples of skills where students lost progress, I'll be eager to investigate.

@Rhondavw Thanks for the feedback. We'll consider adding progress indicators back to the menus.

@Thien D Ho We apologize for the errors in calculus. We've fixed several already and are actively hunting for the remaining errors. Also, thank you for your feedback on early math and ACT. We're taking this all into consideration.

Hello Cameron,

Thank you for the reply. I am glad that you fixed the errors, and making progress on Early Math and ACT.

We are having free classes to help students with math and other subjects in the community, and I know that many of them are eager waiting for ACT to start the practice.

Thank you,

Thien D Ho

Hello Cameron,

Thanks for the response, but is there any way to get my original question answered? I'm glad to hear its removal is being reconsidered but why does the main Table of Contents not give any indication of one's progress in the first place? 

My daughter logs on, overcomes every obstacle the new design has put between her and where she left off, and ends up here with no way to know where she left off without clicking through each and every subject.

What great benefit to learning was gained by making people guess what they have to do next?

@Cameron, I'm aware that my questions may seem ungrateful but I have offered to donate $100 to KA to maybe have them answered: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Khan/comments/4u2vvl/100/

It seems that every KA staffer that posts here makes one statement and then is never heard from again. I thought $100 was a fair number for an hour of hipster / coder time but maybe I'm wrong? :)

The lumping together of the K thru 2 grades is symptomatic of the design flaws I see. Great that consideration is being given to the issue but only someone without young children, designing the site to look cool on their phone in a coffee shop rather than functional, would lump them together in the first place. Where did they think your 3rd graders were going to come from? 

The K2 issue is one that can be navigated around, but it is just another example that leads me to believe that whoever is responsible for this current design doesn't use the site other then to check if the right amount of confetti is popping out of the answer button.

I care enough about KA to hope that I'm wrong but I can't get any answers.

@Rhondavw As of today, grades K-2 are available here: khanacademy.org/math/early-math (see the "Classes" tab).

And I've passed along your other feedback as well.

-Cam

@Cameron Thanks for the follow up. I believe you are the first staffer I've encountered on the help desk that has re-responded in a post so I do give you points for that.

Re the K-2 issue, as I said it can be navigated around but it demonstrates what I mean by obstacles being put in student's way. 

A 3-5 year old gets to KA. Then they have to click on the lumped together K - 2nd link, which, BTW also lumps the total progress% together. This takes them to a useless EXPLORE page. They don't want to explore, they are just trying to get to a specific lesson. There they now have to click on a CLASSES link which takes them to a table of contents listing 3 separate grades, none of which indicates the students progress. But they get lucky and pick the right grade first try. Now they are at what amounts to another EXPLORE page for that particular grade where they have to scroll down through useless links to find a TABLE of CONTENTS that again, doesn't show where they left off. So now they may have to click through several links to find out where to start back up from.

Really? That is easier than adding 2 lines to the subject menu and at the very least changing the color of visited links like every other site does so that users know where they have been? My first thought is that if you are passing feedback along to the same people who think this is good design I'll keep my hopes at a low altitude. :)

But back to my first question: Why does the main Table of Contents not give any indication of one's progress?

Why can't anybody simply answer that question? Help me out. Maybe I'm doing something wrong and maybe if I double right-click and hold the ? key down or something on a Table of Content's icon confetti will pop out of it to let me know I've already completed the subject?

If not there has to be a valid reason for leaving such a basic level of functionality out of the new design but no one at KA seems to know what it is.

To Cameron or To Whom It May Concern,

I recently noticed that the credit I got by having correct answer on a problem is revoked, if I open the hint to see how KA solve the problem. This may be also due to the recent update too?

Please EXPLAIN why KA is doing this to the student? I thought, by studying the hints after correctly solving a problem is also part of self-learning process, but why KA strip off the credit?

Thien D Ho

@RhondavwAs I've said, I've raised the issue with the appropriate people and it's being taken into consideration. Your voice is being heard. I'm not in a position to give a more detailed answer than that. Also, this isn't really the place for discussing progress indication or site navigation. This thread is about the recent content changes in missions. If you'd like to ask more questions about those other things, please file separate support tickets.

@Thien The issue you raised would be unrelated to the content changes. In fact, it would be a serious bug! I tried to reproduce it on my account several times and couldn't. If you run into the issue again, please file a separate support ticket through our help center.

Thanks,

-Cam

@Cameron I asked the same question to Laurie in another thread specifically concerning progress %. No reply. I've asked the same question through the help desk several times with no answer. I've asked the KA moderators on the KA Reddit page. No answer. You say my voice is being heard but clearly the question mark at the end isn't.

It is not a difficult question. There has to be a reason for someone deciding to remove any indication of progress from the TOC level. It is not a coding accident, or mistake. Someone said "Kids don't need to know where they've been on the site because....."

I can fully understand that you might not be in a position to provide an answer, but earlier you stated "We'll consider adding progress indicators back to the menus." I had assumed you were part of the "we" in a position to do that and would thus be able to answer the question. If you are not one of the appropriate people point me in their direction and I'll ask them directly.

In the meantime I'll start a new thread and try as you suggest.

To Cameron or To Whom It May Concern,

Thank you for your comment regarding to my issue (credit stripped off if view the hints after giving the correct answer). I will find another way. But I am in the same situation as Rhonda. I filled in many ERROR REPORTS and QUESTIONS, but I seldom get reply or explanation. Would you please let me know where is the best place for me to send my issue to.

I also noticed, if I view the video (go along with a problem), then I will not get the credit at all even thought I gave the correct answer after watching the related video!!!

Why KA set up that way? It is suppose to be a place for student to do the self-learning. So, they should be allowed to learn the best way in order to work out the problems. Or even after getting the correct answer, they should learn to see if there is a better way by viewing the Hints. KA should not strip off credit.

Thien D Ho

@Thien,  Months ago, more than one KA staffer told me that a detailed blog post was being worked on at KA HQ to explain the changes, but I still haven't seen it. It would be nice if the appropriate people would get their act together.

@Cameron I'll respect your point about this not being the thread to discuss this, but the problems we are asking about, hidden grades, challenges put before lessons, no basic indication of progress, are issues that don't need to be considered, they need to be fixed if the KA motto is to be believed.

I feel as if I've run up to a fireman and told him his hair is on fire and he tells me he'll pass that info along to the appropriate people for consideration. 

It says there are new missions for AP Calculus AB and BC, but they don't seem to exist. Am I missing something or did you mean to say there are new "class pages" for these topics?

@PaulO18 good catch. I've updated the page. Sorry about that.

@Thien @Rhonda The correct place to file issues unrelated to the changes to content in missions is the "Report a problem" link in our help center: https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/

It is August 21 and integrated Math 1, Math 2, and Math 3 are still not available as a subject for my classes or as a mission for me to monitor and assign...

I see they do exist on one part of the website:

• https://www.khanacademy.org/math
• https://www.khanacademy.org/math/math1
• https://www.khanacademy.org/math/math2
• https://www.khanacademy.org/math/math3

It is very helpful for me if Math 1, 2, 3 exists as a subject/mission option.  Will this happen at some point and is there an estimate for when it will happen?

Thank you for your time.  Good day.

@Jeffrey sorry, there will not be missions for Math 1, 2, and 3. I've updated the message accordingly. We're actively working on building monitoring and assignment directly into classes.

@Cameron Thanks!  So...  Last year as a teacher of Math 3 I assigned my students the "World of Math" mission and then found and carefully recommended all the Mathematics 3 integrated content within it.  It was a challenge to do and difficult to monitor, but I did it because Math 3 contains content from more than just Algebra 2...  And I thought Khan was a great resource.

It would be SO MUCH easier and more effective if Math 1, 2, 3 existed as missions/subjects!  I have all three of these classes this year and it is just too much work to do what I did last year for just Math 3 so I'm planning to not use Khan the way I did last year even though I thought it was effective.

So...  Who do I beg to make this category exist?  What can I do to persuade the powers that be to take this next step???
Thank you for any direction you give.  Goodnight.

@Jeffrey I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that I've spoken with the powers that be, and in the short term we will not provide you with missions functionality in these classes. The good news is that we are actively working a better solution to meet your classroom needs. You can expect more details on this in the coming months.

I didn't realize there was an update. However, My daughter's algebra 1 account stopped working properly after the update. She will type in an answer in the missions/mastery area and when she clicks "check answer" it doesn't do anything (there is no reply and appears to be useless) unless she has the correct answer. It used to say she was incorrect or missing a step, etc... but now it does nothing unless she puts in a correct answer.