Bring Old Badges and Profile Banners back!

Hi. As some of us know, when Khan Academy changed their platform at about 2019, we lost a lot of cool features, like profile banners and more diverse and exciting badges. I cannot overemphasize how important motivation is. When I got close to 10,000,000 energy points, I was super motivated to get more, watching extra videos and shelling for energy points, for the Tesla Badge. I am currently motivated to make good, long answers to get the answer badges. I think these little game mechanics Khan Academy has built into the site are great, but I think they need to go one step further. We should be able to spend our energy points, and there should be leaderboards for the most energy points earned in a week, or something, and definitely more badges. There are already signs of KA “re-gamifying” the website, from the new Streak features and Levels, as well as their accompanying new badges. Now, I have a reason to get up in the morning and do an exercise to proficient. There is also the Khanmigo Hat feature, where you can buy hats for Khanmigo via spending energy points. This is all great progress! I’m aware KA has an incredibly small team and budget, but I still feel this needs to be done. Khan Academy, it feels, that is still simply a site with videos and videos and simply a couple exercises and articles to support those. It’s a great homework tool, it always has been, for school, a great lecturing tool, but for independent learning and homeschool? Ouch. Khanmigo has certainly bridged the gap, but with new competition such as Brilliant and especially Duolingo, which has the features I’ve talked about. Very game-like badges, levels, and a leaderboard. It’s motivating, genuinely fun, and they’ve just added a math  course, KA’s biggest strength, I feel KA needs to innovate. And especially the APP. The app, I’m sorry, sucks. It has almost none of the features of the website, from checking your profile, discussions, chats, and the whole streak platform. It needs work. And the general site layout is distinctive and modern, but I feel it needs to go further with the avatars. Make new animations and graphics, generally make learning fun! Like Khan Kids.

Thank you for reading all of this. I hope you share your thoughts in the comments!

:-)