Student activity reporting

I have used Khan Academy extensively in 3 schools over the past 4 years. I am a major promoter of Khan Academy in my current school district. I have a concern that recent changes to Khan Academy have promoted conventional classroom usage and made it more difficult to promote growth mindset in students.

Let me articulate the specific changes and how they have impacted my ability to promote growth mindset.

1) I used to be able to get a report listed in alphabetical order by student name. It identified the points, minutes, struggling skills, and mastered skills for a specified time period. I used this report extensively to promote growth mindset. I rewarded students who were struggling on skills as well as students who had mastered skills. I rewarded students who logged significant minutes or received significant energy points. As students worked at their own level, this became a great way to promote friendly competition between students. Any student who worked hard could receive a reward. I also used the minutes from this report as a homework grade that was based solely on effort! This motivated students to practice an average of 60 minutes each day! I do not see any current online reports organized in alphabetical order so associating anything in Khan to a grade book is exceedingly difficult.

2) I used to be able to drill down into student work and see how much time students spent on each problem, whether or not they were successful, and whether or not they used the associated videos or hints. I routinely displayed this report to the class to show how successful students struggle, but then master challenging skills by utilizing videos and hints. I held students accountable for using Khan Academy in a productive manner. I did not give them credit for minutes worked in Khan Academy if they missed 10 problems in a row and never used the associated videos or hints. This promoted effective use of Khan Academy.

3) I used to be able to see a report for each skill and see the skill status for each student (not started, practiced, struggling, level 1, level 2, and mastery). I used this report to ensure each student worked on the skill of the day and I organized small tutoring groups for the students who were struggling. This allowed students who mastered the skill to work ahead and not be involved in being taught skills they had already mastered. It is not clear to me how the new statuses relate: Not started, Attempted, Familiar, Proficient, and Mastered. It is not clear what represents the old "struggling" status which was so helpful.

4) The original "mission" interface is now on the last tab for a mission. This interface promotes growth mindset by showing students their percent complete and allowing them freedom to work on their mission with the goal of completing their mission rather than on just completing an assignment. The new assignment interface and the "explore" and "practice" tabs seem to support a more conventional classroom where all students are working on the same thing. I find the assignments great for online quizzes and tests but I would prefer that students work primarily on the "mission" interface to keep them focused on completing their mission. I encourage students to work there but invariably find them working from the more textbook-like interfaces of "explore" and practice". It is unclear to me how content and percent complete tracking is related between these tabs.

I really hope I can have a discussion about these issues with a thought leader who is charting the future of Khan Academy. I believe Khan is the greatest thing to happen to math education in the past century and I am completely committed to using it to engage students at their level and help them to grow in confidence and competence. I am just finding it increasingly more difficult to use in a classroom that is 100% dedicated to grading based on growth mindset.