In addition, I'm getting reminders about keeping my streak but, as near as I can tell, the entire EE course only has a single skill. That's pretty demotivating, as it will take a good month or two to make it through the course. In other words, there's no way to maintain a streak.

You don't have to finish the entire course to maintain a streak; you only have to reach the proficient level in a skill within the week.

On my Dashboard when I click the arrow to show my course levels, it lists two courses that I'm not even enrolled in (AP Physics and Calculus) and doesn't list the EE course that I am in (see screen image below).

It is a bit weird that your EE course isn't showing up, though... maybe you haven't gotten to proficient in any of the exercises? Or, now that I think about it, maybe you have the physics and calc course in your "My Courses" on your profile, but the EE course isn't? I've pulled up my screen to see if I have an example of what's happening with the physics and calc courses on your end, and lo and behold, I do! So here's an example of my screen:

In addition, there doesn't seem to be a good explanation for new users of the terminology used: "covered skills", "unique skills", "mastery skills", etc.

A "skill" is like a practice set. "Unique skills" are new practice sets that you haven't done before, and "covered skills" are skills that are related to the one you were already working on.

These articles might also help you out:

https://support.khanacademy.org/hc/en-us/articles/360054115071-What-are-Streaks-and-Course-Levels

https://support.khanacademy.org/hc/en-us/articles/28801454895373-How-do-Course-Levels-work

https://support.khanacademy.org/hc/en-us/articles/5548760867853--How-do-Khan-Academy-s-Mastery-levels-work

ℍ𝕠𝕡𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕙𝕖𝕝𝕡𝕤! ⯌

Hi Axel,

The level popup (shown in your screenshot) displays mastery-enabled courses that you have most recently worked on. This can be confusing due to some content items being listed in multiple courses. For example, the Kirchhoff's current law video in the Electrical Engineering course is also listed in the AP Physics 2 course. So if I watch part of that video, the AP Physics 2 course will appear in the mastery level popup because I recently worked on an item listed in that course and that course is mastery-enabled. The Electrical Engineering course is not mastery-enabled, so that's why it doesn't appear in the list.

A mastery-enabled course is a course that supports mastery-based learning through exercises, quizzes, and unit tests. If a course is mastery-enabled, you will see your mastery progress at the top of the course page. It would look something like this:

Here's what my course level looks like and an explanation of what each component means:

1. My overall course level is 40

The level bar shown on your learner homepage represents your overall level across all courses on the site. To reach level 41, I need to reach the proficient level in 40 more skills. To reach level 40, I must have mastered a lot of skills, the vast majority of which were in other courses not listed here (because I haven't worked in those courses recently).

2. My level for the Algebra 1 course is 4

To go from Level 4 to Level 5 in that course, you have to reach the proficient mastery level for 4 skills. I have already done this for 2 skills, so I still need to get 2 more skills to proficient to reach the next level.

You can generally think of a "skill" as a "practice exercise". The only exception to this is practice exercises that are listed in multiple courses---if you reach proficient for one of these exercises, that will count for all of the courses the exercise is listed in. In this scenario, you would gain one skill point in each of those courses, but only one skill point towards your overall level since the overall level only counts "unique skills".

In your particular case, since the Electrical Engineering course is not mastery-enabled, none of this is relevant to that course. You unfortunately won't be able to earn mastery points, increase your overall course level, or maintain a streak unless you also work on other mastery-enabled courses.

Please let me know if you have any further questions! I'm happy to help!