Yes! Yes! Yes!

This is especially a problem in the iPad app, where what gets put into the handwriting area is not always translated the way I intended it to be. I have learned, after many months, to always look at what got put into the answer box before hitting Check, but I get complacent after a while, or I’m just in a hurry. This could be alleviated if the handwriting box in the iPad app could be replaced by the equation keyboard. The technology is there in the iPad app because this is used in the articles for the Try It problems. I have also learned to adjust my own handwriting sometimes to improve my chances at my answer being recognized properly.

Hello, I am doing Khan Academy online and I have sometimes the chance to try a question of a quiz or practice again. But if I have only three answers to choose I become sometimes lazy and just press on one of the two remaining which looks more fitting to me with the thought that the probability to catch the right one is 50%.

I do not intend to cheat or something like that but after a time, when you get tired, you do it just automatically. So I am not sure whether it would be aways good to have a second trial.

When I do not get 100% I just retake the quiz, in the math-sections I practiced in there where only 4-5 questions per quiz so it didn't take long to redo it.

It may help to note that I am a math teacher. So I think that this would work specifically for math, since I have not really seen the other subjects on Khan Academy. I am talking specifically about problems that you can work through mathematically rather than multiple choice problems. So for instance, if a student forgets to write a negative sign, they may be able to look back on their work and figure out where they went wrong and be able to fix that mistake.

We have to also keep in mind that there are different levels for math students as well. It may be a quick quiz redo for an Algebra I student, but an Algebra II may be doing long division problems which can take quite some time. 

I have seen many sites that use multiple tries on problems and they seem successful to me. While I appreciate your comment, I don't think it is an outrageous idea to have a second try on a problem. There are times when a student has me check their work and being a human myself, I miss that they forgot a negative or added something wrong and it just adds to their frustration as well as mine! I think there are times when it can be abused, as can any modification, but the pros outweigh the cons.

Hi math-teacher sbuss,

I didn't mean to dis-appreciate your proposal, either, no, I didn't mean that your idea is bad as a whole. Are you using an app? If yes, you should try to ask at Mobile Platform Questions and Feedback, if not, then your students should be able to redo a question again. If I make a mistake, then the answer is marked with a red cross instead of the green tick. If I answer then right, I get the green tick but I do not get points for the question. Is this what you mean? So, using Mozilla Firefox on Windows 8.1 I am able to fix my answer in a way, i.e. to find the mistake. But I think it is right that I do not get the points for the anwer if I answer it only after the second trial for in a real exam you do not have the possibility to correct your answer at all.

I agree. I was looking at a notebook to help my answer the problems in a test I was taking and read my handwriting wrong, which resulted in me typing the wrong answer in but I wasn't allowed to correct my stupid mistake with the correct one with out getting scored low on the test.  This system ids not the best for struggling learners.

Here's my suggestion on how it should work:

1. If you have not chosen to look at any hints, you will get one more try at the problem.

2. On your second try, if you get it right, you will get the point for getting the problem right. Otherwise. you won't get the point, even if you get it right on a third or subsequent try. Or maybe there can be more than two tries allowed to get the point, as long as you don't look at the hints.

3. As for looking at the hints, the actual answer is revealed in the last hint, so that is why looking at the hints currently causes someone to not get the point for the problem, even if they get it right. There are a varying number of hints for the questions. So, if Khan Academy has a way to determine if someone has exhausted all of the available hints for this problem or not, then if someone uses fewer than the number of available hints, either before attempting the problem in the first place or after the person's first answer turns out to be wrong, that person will then get the point if their first/next answer is correct. But once someone has seen the final hint, then the person does not get the point. If Khan Academy can't tell how many hints the person has used for the problem, then the person can't get the point once any hints have been looked at.

Regina, I agree with every single thing that you said!

Okapi, I didn’t mean to sound offended; I’m just really passionate about making this happen for my students! All good! My students don’t use the iPad, they use desktop or chrome books. It’s usually just a matter of not correctly copying work from their paper into the answer bar correctly or silly mistakes.

For practices, maybe but for mastery challenge, quizzes, and unit tests, I don't think this should be a feature. This somewhat harsh feature mirrors real life when answering problems on a test. It teaches the student to look over their work carefully as it has taught me, and I make sure to check my work carefully now. Would you rather make silly mistakes on a website that doesn't affect your grade or make silly mistakes on a test that does count toward your grade? It may be frustrating, but I think it would be much more frustrating if it negatively impacted my grades, GPA, and possibly even my future.

20leunge or 20Ieunge - I can’t tell if that third character is an uppercase I (eye) or a lowercase l (ell) - You make some good points. However, anyone who has used Khan Academy on the iPad (and probably the Android version, too, if it uses the handwriting tool) knows only too well the frustration of thinking you entered the correct answer only to find after hitting “Check” that your handwriting was read incorrectly. Perhaps a decimal point/period was read as a comma, or an uncrossed seven was read as a one, or an uncrossed zee/zed/z was read as a 2. When I was a new user of Khan Academy on this platform, I was constantly getting wrong answers due to the handwriting interpretation.

I did learn two things from this, though. First, I needed to adjust my handwriting to fit the way it’s interpreted by the handwriting processor. In addition to making my zee/zed/z’s, sevens, and periods/decimal points clearer, I learned to write k’s and y’s as print, not cursive, letters. Plus many other adaptations. Second, I had to look at at what actually got put into the answer box.

Anyway, the point (no pun intended) I’m trying to make is that even people who know the stuff backwards and forwards and THINK they have entered the correct answer could get it wrong and lose the point for that question due to the handwriting interpreter interpreting it wrong. Personally, I feel that the left off negative signs that someone else mentioned are a more serious mistake than app misinterpretations. And when I have lost a point in my practices due to these types of errors, I admit my mistake and understand that it should be considered to be an error.

I’ve even had situations in which I entered an incorrect answer (either careless, like leaving off a negative sign, or actual, like doing the problem wrong), the handwriting interpreter read it incorrectly, I discovered what was misinterpreted after getting Try again, made sure the intended answer showed up in the answer box, hit Check again, and still got Try Again due to my original intended answer being wrong. It is because of this type of situation that the suggestion I posted earlier only allows for one retry before not getting the point.

20elounge, I agree to some extent. I think it would be fine to have a second try on quizzes. I tried not to imply that you should be able to get second tries on unit tests in my comment as I do agree that there is some value in teaching student to check their work. I think if practices and quizzes had second tried, students would be able to teach themselves how to check their own work instead of just using hints. I hope this makes sense!

I would like to clear up that when I say that a student leaves off a negative sign, I mean that they have written it correctly on their paper but simply didn’t see it when they put it in the answer slot. Sometimes when I am sitting a certain way and trying to look at the answer, I have trouble seeing the vertical slash on the plus sign and I myself don’t see that they accidentally make that mistake. I have pretty good eyesight myself! Maybe the plus signs need to be darkened as well.

I would like to add that I’m surprised that this seems somewhat controversial as many math homework sites connected to textbooks allow 2nd and even 3rd tries on problems, such as Connect and Webassign. Connect even allows you to re-do the assignment after you’ve finished it (much like Khan) AND it only makes you redo the types of problems that you got wrong. Now, Khan is somewhat different from these sites in the fact that you can just get on and start self paced if you would like versus Connect and Webassign have to be assigned by an instructor. Still, I think Khan could take a couple of tips from these sites for general improvement. Your mastery of a problem or type of problems has nothing to do with typing an answer into a computer the "right" way or your ability to answer a problem exactly the right way on the first try. Everybody makes simple mistakes and they shouldn't always be punished for it on the first try. Second tries are a thing of life. Sure, there should be no second tries on a unit test but give students a chance to try again on practices and quizzes so they actually learn to check their work before plugging it in with out getting frustrating and just looking at hint after hint.

I would also like to add that my focus on students getting frustrated has to do with a general stigma about mathematics (possibly nation-wide) that math is “frustrating” and “not fun.” We should try to help relieve some of that frustration if we have the ability. I think that’s why many sites allow more than one try on problems (along with technological reasons of course).

(P.s. I tend to come off as angry when I make posts on the internet and I am not sure why. I am not mad!)