Why can't we reset the unit tests/quizzes after messing up? I've been at this for hours and cannot get 100% because it makes me complete the test instead of just being able to start over. How are people not complaining about this more? half the time is spent just typing fake answers to skip through so i can start over. So frustrating. Why haven't they fixed this?
Please add a reset button. its very annoying when you do the start, get 3 questions wrong , then have to do the remaing 12 questions even tho its not going to do anything. In my case, i already partly did the test then quit for the day. and when i came back to it, it still had those question up. so i usally just type in 1 and skip the question wich brings my grade down. please addd a reset button.
The main counter-argument to adding a reset-button seems to be that it makes the grades less reflective of what the learner actually knows, causing them to not be able to learn more.
No.
Everyone I've ever known unanimously agrees that the school system's grades are, at best, an absolutely awful way of representing someone. If I could check my notes or look up how to do something, fix my answer, and not have my teacher put an 80% on my report card just because I missed one character, I'd have learned so much more than by either putting in fake answers until I get 100% or just taking the hit on my grade and getting an 80%. In practice, learners will either make their mistake and move on, accepting that it will hurt the grade that will follow them through the rest of their lives, or they will put in fake answers to reset and get a 100%. Neither of these benefit the learner, and adding a reset button would make no difference other than save hours apon hours of life.
An answer some people have proposed is for teachers to be able to toggle this option. I'm a little mixed on this idea but if a teacher disabled it as would probably SEEM like a good choice, students would be back to wasting time on fake answers. The truth is that if you want to learn something, you have to learn it for yourself. If you want to see an accurate grade so you know what you do wrong, don't reset, and if you want to get an acceptable grade for a mere homework assignment on something you already understand, then do reset, and if you need help from the teacher, write and email or ask in person (I understand asking is hard to do, but if it is needed then it can be done.)
I've been following this thread for a long time. I'm not usually active in discussions and I believe everything has already been said in this case, but today I've had enough. I'm a completionist like a lot of people here. I'm an adult learner. I used to wholeheartedly love Khan Academy. Now it's literally making me hate it.
It used to be pretty frustrating making mistakes in the Unit Tests. Now with the new interface with Mastery Levels etc (which I actually think could be really cool), it's literally INFURIATING. Let's say I get 95% on a Unit Test in Trygonometry. I'm fully confident I understand the topic but I want to get to 100% because that's the only way how I (and a LOT of other people) can feel like we finished this subject. I start the Unit Test, it's been a long day and I'm a bit tired but also motivated because I know I'm THIS close to finishing one more class. The problems are pretty easy for me but still take a significant amount of time because they require lots of calculations. I'm somewhere in the middle and suddenly it happens - I make a mistake. An error in my calculations or maybe I didn't notice that the answer was supposed to be rounded in a particular way. Whatever it was, the Unit Test is failed. I won't get 100%. What do I do now? I just want to start over, concentrate a bit more and just make it right this time. So I do what I used to do before the update - I input random answers to the remaining questions (obviously I'd prefer to just reset the test but oh well...). Do you know what happens next? I actually LOOSE PROGRESS in the areas where I input random answers just to get to the end of the test quickly. This is making me so mad, am I seriously supposed to waste time on finishing all the other problems even though I already know I can't get a better score (but I can possibly get a worse one)?! Who the hell would enjoy that?!
And it's not just adult learners you know, I mentor two kids that I wanted to use Khan Academy. They hate Unit Tests. Is it really supposed to make kids feel this way?
I'm a web developer and I just can't stand the fact that this feature could be implemented in a couple days (I'm 90% sure of that) but we're ąll waiting for a year, extremely annoyed, most of us probably already gave up on the platform because of that.
We want to love Khan Academy again. Please make it possible.
Just wanted to chime in that although I'm very new to the site this is also really bothering me - a lot. Several of the people I'm taking my classes with (we're all adults) actually discouraged me from starting with using Khan Academy for learning purposes because of the unit test system. Starting out with the site I really couldn't see their point, but while on day two i thought about donating to this awesome project a week later I'm now close to quitting the site again simply because of the unit test system. My example: Algebra Basics - Foundations.
It's freaking 28 Questions long, takes about 25 minutes and I guess I've by now spent 4 hours on doing it over and over again without getting it to a 100 percent - but not because I'm bad at the topic, it's nearly always due to "Oh, you input the decimal as "," and not as "."" or "Oh, whoopsie, you didn't simplify it enough" or "You've done this stupid test 5 times now and it's really late so we now want you to count checkerboard boxes instead of the regular ones" or stuff like that. And guess what? I have to actually ace the entire rest of the test - even though I know it's pointless to do so - or you get one of those lovely "Congratulations! You leveled down in 13 skills and lost 10 trillion mastery points"-Messages. And while I know that you don't NEED 100% in a skill, it's definitely not very pleasing to see "Oh, you only achieved 96% in this area. Well that's ... okayish, I guess. Well done, you!"
If you don't want to put in a reset button (as the last one said it can't really be work for a developer - the "start again" button is already there after all when you're done), why not make those unit tests smaller? I can suffer myself through 10 questions twenty times easily, but 30 questions, one after another, and when you get one wrong it's all pointless, but you can't escape it? That's just intentional cruelty.
I've not opened the app for I think a year now. It's way too frustrating because of this one issue. I too was in a habit of randomly answering questions to get to the end of the quiz so I could restart when I made a dumb mistake: no learning there other than learning how much I can't stand wasting my time.
Be adult, enjoy a little maths.
Think to myself "Why did I give up on Khan Academy?"
Load it up, remember what to do, fire up an easy maths test.
"Lol, silly me, let's try that again"
Twenty minutes of googling later I remember why I gave up.
FWIW: This is why uni's online quizzes are either multiple-choice or hand-marked. It's just too difficult to program something intelligent enough to correctly mark an unrestricted string.
Pierre Nicolas or anyone else, what is "uni" (as in "uni's online quzzes")?
Your experience with the radius/diameter questions reminds of the time back in 5th grade when we were learning about nouns and verbs. The teacher handed us a quiz in which we had to circle all of either the nouns or verbs, I forget which one. I got the two confused and circled just the opposite. This teacher was a no-nonsense type, and he marked me as getting 31 wrong, which was true. But a teacher with a bit more understanding could have given me some credit for knowing that there was a difference between certain words. I wouldn't have deserved a zero wrong, but perhaps half-credit, such as 15 or 16 wrong.
I was normally a good student who rarely made big errors like this.
I would really like to see a reset button too. I often find that I make a silly mistake because I was rushing or because I didn't fully understand the question, not because I didn't grasp the concept or need to work on that particular skill level. When that happens it would be great to be able to reset the test and start over.
Tracee, a “Community Moderator”, wrote here “3 months ago” (Grr - I hate not seeing exact date and time information here):
”The update is being actively discussed, and I do hope to have more information to relay sooner rather than later.”
After three months, I think we have moved into a “later” time frame. It’s too bad, because I got encouraged some time between August 15 and September 14 of this year that this was going to happen soon. Of course, I am preparing myself for a letdown for the inevitable rollout of this only to web users and not to those of us who use the app versions of Khan Academy. But even if it doesn’t get implemented in the apps, at least at the beginning of its availability, it would be a great example of Khan Academy finally doing something based on popular demand.
Of course, if we get it on the apps on day one of its rollout, and it works properly without breaking something else, that would be extra special!
Because I get notifications via email of new additions to this topic, and each one gets bunched with the earlier ones, I was able to see that Tracee responded on September 28 at 10:05 am (probably US Eastern time because that’s what my email is set to display). So, only about 2 1/2 months have elapsed since then; the months counter here may ignore the date within the month, or it may round to the nearest number of months.
I’ll give this expectation of news that this feature is coming for sure to be “sooner rather than later” up until January 14, 2019, since that will bring us to about 3 1/2 months since this promise. I was going to say December 28, but this is during a major holiday period in US/Western culture, and things may slow down then.
I've been away fron Khan Academy for quite some time so I don't know exactly when these new tests were introduced but until they're removed I don't see myself continuing here. I've come to Khan Academy because it's the best place on the web to learn mathematics and see my own progress. So when I logged in I noticed that I was now level five of six in a unit, and not knowing what was going on I decided to take the test to get myself up to level six. I'm now level three in that unit despite knowing all the material simply because I decided to skip through questions once I got one wrong. It doesn't help that this "mastery system" is extremely unintuitive, and breaks the focus on individual skills which made Khan Academy such a great idea to start with.
This are very poor design choices in my opinion and until it's changed I don't see this site as a worthwhile investment. My learning time is limited and while I value the lessons the negatives you receive for isolated mistakes are nothing short of punishing. I miss the old approach where you worked on an individual skill, got it down and then moved on. These assessments are a major step backwards for this site.
Wow, this was asked for 1 year ago, and still nothing has happened.
A feature that most everyone wants.
A feature that is easy to implement.
So where is the reset button?
That the website would want a system where it is in your favor to put in fake answers just to get a new quiz/test, is baffling to me.
Hello all! I recently posted this discussion to an internal thread for the Khan developers just to remind them that so many of our users have this same request. I do know that if users Submit a request and choose I have a feature request or feedback and explain the importance of a reset button or an opportunity to check answers before submitting it will strengthen the case for the feature request. Thank you for posting.
I tried Submit a request (actually worded as Report a problem) and got the following form letter response. I’m sure any of the rest of you who submitted such a request got it, too. This is the closest I’m coming to their recursive suggestion of “mentioning this in our Discussion Forums where others can add their own thoughts.”
Thanks for writing in with your idea! We are always working to add features that improve our site, and we love getting input from our community.
I've passed your feedback along to the team and it will be part of our conversation as we plan the future of Khan Academy. I would also recommend mentioning this in our Discussion Forums where others can add their own thoughts to yours and can vote on your idea.
Thanks for your interest in improving Khan Academy!
Adding my voice to the choir here.
I can no longer suffer this 30-question quiz I've been trying to complete tonight... for one careless mistake I have to do it all over again. An early mistake translates to dozens of bogus answers which have a negative impact on my mastery challenges.
Either split these very long quizzes into more manageable tests or add a reset button, so that we pathological overachievers don't have to go through all the remaining questions every time we misunderstand the instructions or our mouse slips on the wrong choice. This website is awesome and probably the best way to use the internet but oh boy is it frustrating sometimes.
NO. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED TO CHANGE IT!!! PERIOD. It would be like lowering the settings of a game to CRIB (Super easy). The current pointing system will ensure that people don't take these tests lightly and pay full attention to the question. Better read the question twice and be careful while entering the answer. It is just the right amount of challenging and it's double the pleasure when you get 100% at this Professor (Super hard) settings. In fact, I would suggest Khan to add a lot more trick questions that ensure the learner is paying attention. : )
Users could toggle the reset button through their settings page so that they can do as they please. I'm not an English native and often learn on KA after I get home from work, and sometimes happen to make mistakes due to sheer tiredness or language misunderstandings.
This option wouldn't make the tests any easier, because you'd still have to answer 30 questions in a row. It would just be a time-saving solution for those users who like to see perfect scores on their dashboard.
No, please no trick questions! What Lucy wrote about the 30-question tests is quite true! I much preferred the old Mission Mastery system, where we'd get 6 questions at a time (fewer if there were only a few skills left to be mastered), and if we got any wrong, we'd level down, and then we'd do another 6-question test, where we got the chance to level up on either the skills previously missed or ones we hadn't had the chance to level up on. Eventually, we would get them all, although if there were too many missed skills, we would have to wait anywhere from 1-14 hours to try them again (based on my own experience and complaints by others here in the Support Community).
Since Khan Academy seems to be set on keeping the new Mastery system and eventually retiring Mission Mastery, adding the reset button would make this system a bit more bearable. Also, splitting the long tests into multiple parts, as Lucy suggested, would also help.
@Niranjan Krishnamurthy
Feels like you're trolling. Maybe do the quizzes twice. Trick questions just frustrates and wastes time. Frustration discourages participation and lowers retention. Wasting your user base's time alienates them.
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@All
Here's my Submit a Request. I point out the problem, but don't try to define a solution - we're guessing what they would deem acceptable. Instead, I've pointed them at the discussion thread where they can see the different options we've kicked around between us. If they agree it's an issue, they're going to want to work out how to address the parts they see as problems anyway.
Crib from it as you want.
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Love the content, frustrated beyond belief with the unit test system as it currently stands.
I'm an adult casual user. Want to learn maths etc, doing so on my spare time.
In those unit tests:
- Tests include material that is already mastered, not just what is outstanding in the unit.
- A single error means that test cannot achieve 100%.
- Tests cannot be abandoned as a casual user.
- Tests cannot be restarted anew.
- Incorrect answers will remove "mastered" status.
- Tests are massive, ranging around 25 or so questions.
This combination of factors means that an mistake at all means a 100% mark isn't possible yet there is no way for users to give it another go without painstakingly attempting all the remaining questions on pain of losing points. Each 'failed' test becomes a pointless time sink. It's overly punitive and discourages students from chasing the best marks they can in a single test. It gives a poor user experience - there is no fun to be had.
These issues have also been a long running topic, one of the most popular in your forums. Multiple suggestions on how this could be dealt with have been made, but there has been zero substantive comment from Khan Academy on the issue. At this stage, it feels like if our comments had any kind of value for Khan Academy, there would have been some kind of response. In the face of apparent apathy to the chunk of your user base I'm in, I'm not sure I can really care to try to help you improve. I'm gutted though - it's the kind of thing I want to want to support.
I've pretty much given up on Khan Academy at this point. People have lives to live, jobs to hold down and kids to feed. Hopefully you'll address the issues we're raising and I'll want to learn here again.
I'll try to get this format to work...
I understand your perspective, but it only really works if Khan Academy is a game and the information doesn't matter much. If it is that way to you, well, we're glad you chose a productive game to play, but for the vast majority of people, Khan Academy is a great, free, comprehensive, and most of all serious learning platform, not a video game. Granted, gamification is part of how it attempts to keep users engaged, but it isn't the factor that actually contributes to education. Especially the tests, they are meant to tell you what you may want to review before moving on, not to be a "boss fight." Most users, I would guess, are independent users, but many groups use Khan Academy including individuals, businesses, and schools. I was introduced to the program when having to do some of the tests for real class assignments. These became burdensome, however, as our teacher would put the real grade as the grade we got on the test. That means a Khan Academy test was contributing to the overall pass/fail of a class, so of course I wanted to do well. Funny thing about time, the longer you spend on something, the more tired of it you get. This meant that I would get home around 4pm then begin a test, then make a context mistake the first 2 times through the test, then go back and make mistakes due to tiredness as opposed to ignorance for the next 3 hours until I finally got my hands to type the right answers that I had in my head. There is not enough time in a day for any part of High School, so why should a test that takes 10 minutes to complete take 3 hours to do well on? Imagine if I had an extra 2 hours to finish my other school work or take other Khan Academy lessons? I respect your opinion, but it is my opinion that trick questions and the lack of a reset button are simply burdensome and aggravating to most users.
Trick questions would make an entertainment video game's playability last longer, but the point of Khan Academy is to learn, not to pass time. Making it difficult with things that don't involve education would put Khan Academy in a very bad place where no-one wanting to learn would have any desire to use the platform. The extra challenge may be engaging to a select few, but would waste more hours of time overall that could be spent more productively.
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I've been subscribed to this thread for a while now, and it has really stepped up exponentially over the last few weeks, I think we actually may have a chance! To be honest, I haven't had the time to draft a "Submit a Request" partly because my computer keeps failing, but I think this discussion is building support and influence. Thanks for joining the petition!
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@All
I like addressing counter claims, perhaps too much, so let's look at how, in schools, this benefits everyone, teachers included!
School boards manage a few schools, school staff manages, say, 20 teachers, and teachers manage, say, 20 students.
Most of this works decently because both sides understand most parts of what they are doing and their position, with the exception of teachers to students. Let's say a teacher has to teach 10 things to 20 people in 60 minutes with a test at the end, which is about normal. They traditionally had 2 options: Teach each student individually for 3 minutes, or teach all 20 students for 20 minutes. If the teacher goes with the first option, they may only cover, say, 2 of the 10 things, but the student will understand those 2 things entirely and get the related questions on the test correct, but miss the other 80%. If the teacher chooses to teach everyone at once, each student will probably understand 7 of the 10 things but need help more help before understanding the other 3. They can't get this help at the time, however, because the teacher has to work with everyone. In this scenario, each student will score about 70% on the test as opposed to 20%, which is much better, but surely there is a way to include the remaining 30%? Well, that is where good notes, textbooks, and online learning sites like Khan Academy come into play. If the teacher also helped facilitate Khan Academy among the students, each student might have the 60 minutes to learn all 10 things with the amount of detail they need individually and the teacher would be available to help each student! This means each student could learn everything for this imaginary test! Of course, some students will shy from asking their teacher questions or choose not to engage in the learning process, so I'm not saying this is exactly what should happen. Ideally, some mid point would be established based on each class's needs. If Khan Academy was used as just a test and not a learning tool, then it would fall somewhere in the middle where the teacher still has to teach the whole class, just with the minor input of any unanimous errors in one section. Without a reset button, this is where everyone would be as students would get stuck, not wanting to move on or put thought into their work. With a reset button, students would have the time to find, review, and enhance what they need! To be clear, teachers normally do a pretty amazing job for what they are tasked with, and I'm not saying teachers should let Khan Academy take over, but by using it as an instructional tool in class and not another stressful test, time could be saved and even more material taught! The lack of a reset button, however, ruins this whole theory and makes Khan Academy inconvenient for individualized learning, especially in a busy High School day. (I just started a pole, and the mode of answers among students I was able to ask indicates that many of us spend over 5 hours on any given week day on homework alone, although, according to the "rule of thumb" found online, this should be closer to 1.5 to 2 hours. This is incredibly common all over the U.S. Come on society! You can do better than that!)
I don't think a mere reset button would release the full potential of Khan Academy, but it would be a major step in the right direction! I don't look forward to forced homework on the platform, but I would take 20 minutes of homework over 3 hours any day!
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A final thank you to everyone who has put in the time to express opinions, offer suggestions, and consider this topic!
@Regina Litman
I too received a response after Submitting a Request:
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I understand the unease and frustration you must be feeling due to the unit tests in Khan Academy. We are always working to improve our site, and we love getting input from our community.
I've shared with my team your feedback on the unit tests. I recommend you to mention it in our Feature Requests and General Site Feedback forum as well. Your feedback is likely to get more exposure by getting upvotes or comments from users that agree and we'd value to hear your voice there too.
Thank you for helping us improve Khan Academy! If there's anything else I can help you with, feel free to reach back.
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I'm pleased they recognised my frustrated tone, but all up it sounds like we're getting a form letter without a) much investigation into the Request itself or b) checking the forums post I refer to that they imply they care about, even after your earlier post.
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If you are short on time and want to "Submit a Request" feel free to take and modify my post to the extent it represents how you feel about the issue. I posted it to try to make it easier for people to state their position.
I just started a unit test with 34 questions.
First question: Instead of tax only I wrote whole taxed price in the result. Calculated correctly ofcourse. And I had the skill mastered before. A just made a mistake.
Now what?? The test is supposed to take about an hour. And I can not reset it.
This issue is huge, Miroslav. KA have taken a hard-line against changing the product to allow a very simple restart. The only justification I can find anywhere in their responses is "the children" or some nonsense. They don't understand the reward system of having 100% completed when you know all the answers but there's some glitch in their UX causing fails. They could easily put in an age parameter there where they know your dob and for < a certain age they disallow resets. Or they could easily introduce a parent lock type function if it's so important to the educational experience. They won't and I think many of their users are eagerly awaiting this fix but it will never come. I won't even login anymore unless it's to leave a comment about this one issue because it's been so frustrating. I can't abide it. I need to see 100% complete but I don't have Sisyphus' infinity to get it right. Michael
A few days ago, I thought of a new approach to handling this. I was doing a practice exercise with four questions. I made a stupid mistake on the third question. I forgot the minus sign for a negative number. (I am now doing Physics, and the question involved a downward velocity, where the value is negative. I am still getting used to this.)
What I found myself wishing for was the opportunity to get the practice exercise extended by one question, covering the same type of material as the question I got incorrect. I would have a five-question practice instead of a four-question one, but that would be okay. If I got all of the other questions correct, then I would have the 80% mastery I would have had if I had gotten all four of the original questions correct.
I've thought about how this could be implemented. First, I want to say that this is similar to a mastery system that Khan Academy used about four years ago when I first discovered the site (but more than two years before I started using it seriously). This was a system in which someone had to get a certain number of problems/questions in a row correct. I've seen complaints here in the Support Community about how some people, especially children and teenagers, were stressed out by this method. My idea is similar to this, but it doesn't make the attainment of the highest level of mastery awarded by this practice, quiz, or test dependent on getting a certain number of consecutive problems/questions correct. If I got question 3 of a 4-question exercise wrong but got the other questions, including the extra one added at the end, correct, I would have only had to get two in a row (the last two, and, for that matter, the first one) correct.
For a 9-question Unit Test, if I missed, say, question 5 but got 1-4 and 6-9 correct and then requested the extra one at the end, I would have only needed to get five in a row (6-9 plus the extra one) correct.
Some options and limitations I suggest:
1. This would be optional. If test-takers think they could really use more studying time, they could decline the extra question. Of course, upon a retake of the exercise, quiz, test, or course challenge, they would get the whole thing over again. Also, once this option is declined, it can't be restored.
2. Consideration should also be given to preventing a student from using this. Parents, teachers, or coaches could prevent students from using this feature. However, adult learners should be able to choose on their own to allow it.
3. If implemented, this must be made available on the apps on the same day it is made available on the web site.
4. This can only be done once per exercise, quiz, test, or course challenge original question. If the extra question is also missed, there will not be an option for another one. (My suggestion; it can be made more liberal if desired.)
5. However, this can be used for multiple questions in the same exercise, quiz, test, or course challenge.
6. For the exams that test multiple skills - Unit Quizzes, Unit Tests, and Course Challenges, the additional question will be for the same skill as the missed question. It is quite frustrating to take a 23-question Unit Test in a subject with 29 skills, miss one of the questions, then take the 23-question Unit Test again, and not get tested on the skill missed in the last test!
7. The new question will not be the same question that was missed unless there are no more for that skill. This last clause is just to cover the situation in Multivariable Calculus, where there are only two practice exercises as of now, and every time they are attempted, the same questions in each one come up.
I’m surprised this still hasn’t been added yet because it’s frustrating to get an answer wrong cause I misread the question by auto piloting and have to answer all other questions because otherwise you will lose mastery on things you already know just to fix your one answer while repeating all the other questions which you might also misread to repeat the cycle. If I’m frustrated I’m not as effective at learning and answering questions cause all I’m thinking about is why do I have to repeat the entire quiz or test to fix my 1 mistake.
If you think people will abuse the reset and not learn a thing those people are probably already googling their answers anyway if they would do that (but you can’t tell if they are) so why are you punishing those who would use it appropriately just cause a few idiots will cheat.
Plus the time it took me to find this thread and post this comment I could of been learning things but nope i'm frustrated and posting this instead.
EDIT: I realized children would most likely abuse this so if necessary you could age restrict this or give parents/teachers control. But then some will still have this problem so I recommend a testing period or something just so we can see results on how many could abuse the feature.
Post is closed for comments.