Some theories on the retired badges.

First, Evevrything Thrice, how do you know that certain badges have been or are going to be retired? If this is true, then it supports my "theory" that KA is diluting the game mechanics aspect of the site. While it is certainly possible to get badges, certain aspects of the site, such as the removal of the " do exercise again" button and cumulative point counter, seem to point to KA not wanting the accumulation of points to be the main thrust of being at the site. In  and of itself, I have no problem with this, but I have to admit that it was fun to learn and get points at the same time. 

I know that badges have been retired because it lets you know that certain badges you have that have been ¨Retired¨ and not allowed to be earned again. Did you not receive this on any of your badges?

Hi Everything Thrice,

We did retire some badges recently, which is why you’re seeing that label on some of your badges. Rest assured that all the badges you've already earned are yours to keep for good, this just means that some badges won't be earnable by new users going forward.

Although some badges were retired because they weren’t very popular with learners or they were just outdated, most of the badges we retired were related to our Missions learning experience, which is going away on June 30, 2020. If you’d like to read more about why we’re removing Missions, we have a helpful article on that here.

The biggest reason we decided to retire these badges now is a technical one: we’re moving from our current codebase (which is also being retired) to a new one, and carrying unused or out of date badges to the new codebase would be a high-effort and complex project - particularly now when we’re trying to maintain a good site experience for a growing number of learners, parents, and teachers. If you’re interested, our engineering team wrote a blog post that explains this project in more detail.

But again, we don’t want you to worry -- your badges aren’t going away! Any badges you’ve earned will stay yours, just some will now have a retired label next to them in your profile. We also had some badges that could be saved from Missions, so you’ll see some familiar badges that are now earnable in Mastery courses instead.

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any additional questions!

Actually, I'm not sure if you'll see this or know the answer to this, but will there be replacement badges for some of them? A lot of badges like "Millionaire", "Da Vinci" and "1000 Kelvin" are badges that really keep learners newer to Khan Academy striving for more, but now that they're gone the only things to go for are "Frederick Douglass", "Magellan", and the only actual badges (not challenge patches) left for computer programming are mediocre ones like "Evaluator", "Collaborator", and "Challenger" which none of take more than five minutes to earn.

So, to sum it up, it's aggravating that the KA Team didn't even give us a heads-up or anything. I'm hoping that youll be able to give me an answer as to whether there will be more badges to earn.

Sorry for the long, boring comment to read! XD
-SP

Re-introducing some of the retired badges may definitely be a possibility in the future, but unfortunately there is not currently a timeline for when this might happen.

I definitely understand how frustrating it can be to have some of these highly motivating badges removed, but unfortunately this is a necessary step in order to help ensure our site is running smoothly and is maintainable in the future.

I've also gone ahead and passed this feedback along to the team for consideration so your ideas can be taken into consideration once adding new badges is able to be prioritized!

Even though I was really looking forward to getting Da Vinci as fast as possible, I'm just happy Khan Academy itself is still here to help me understand things more than I already do. So as long as Khan Academy is always here to help learn, I'm fine with anything they do.  Also Everything Thrice, I'm sure that the reason badges were retired was because of the code and data queries that were required to keep them active ( I got help from Loyalty, another user).

Yep, as KA keeps growing in its community and learning aspects, it would be due time to move on from old things. New badges (likely) would be introduced.

I want to echo that I think KA is great and I am very grateful for all the amazing content and for letting one learn at their own pace. I have not missed a day since 2012 (even though my log-in status says otherwise) and I look forward to new features and developments at the site.

That being said... it is very apparent that KA is moving away from the game-mechanics aspect of the site. I personally find this disappointing because Sal himself stated that he thought that the game-mechanics part of the site was a great motivator for students to learn. Having witnessed many game-mechanics features disappear from KA over the years I feel it is safe to say that we will never see them again.

"Re-introducing some of the retired badges may definitely be a possibility in the future, but unfortunately there is not currently a timeline for when this might happen."  (In other words, they won't be back.)

I can understand some of this: there is opportunity for taking advantage of the point system in not-so-good ways, in addition to someone just collecting points and not really learning anything. And maybe getting rid of the point system will free up bandwidth resources for other things. But the danger is that by doing away with the game-mechanics, KA may become like any other number of online resources.

To repeat, I really admire and support KA and will always be a huge fan, It's just hard to see the disappearance of the things that made coming to the site so much fun.

I'm going to have to agree with K E V I N there. I don't expect for the badges to come back at all, but I'm almost positive they will come up with more badges to motivate new users. And really, KA would be pretty boring with no badges whatsoever. So yes, I bet SaM.DO r o jA. 1 4 is correct

I agree with « 𝕊ℙ ».

KA should have removed Atlas and Artemis since no one gets them. Why did they remove badges like Millionaire and Lucidrous Listener, which may persuade learners even to learn more to get to those badges? They should remove badges that people do not earn. Having badges with a higher degree will persuade the learners to even learn more and get those badges. Seriously it has been 5 or 4 months since they have removed the badges.

Brajendra-

"Supposedly" and/or according to some urban legends, Atlas and Artemis could be achieved, at least in the past when content -videos and exercises- was far less than it is today. My best guess is that Atlas and Artemis can be earned, but the algorithm would have to be stumbled upon rather than having it be known publicly and then trying to meet that public criteria.

I totally agree about removal of badges like Millionaire. I've said in other posts that I think KA is drifting away from the game-mechanics aspect of the site that was such a unique and fun feature. I am not privy to why this is happening but my best guess is that the on-line teaching environment is extremely crowded and competitive right now and a site like KA that could potentially distract a learner with a game-point system would not be the best option for a parent or a school system trying to get their students to focus on content. I don't buy this, but I can understand if some parents and educators do. (I think this is evidenced by the fact that at KA right now they want you to move on and achieve mastery as soon as possible, as opposed to doing an exercise 75 times until you get a speed badge.)

I've been coming to KA for 8 years and I've  seen a lot of changes. I still really appreciate the site and say thanks to Sal and the team for all the great content.

ＫＥＶＩＮ Khans point system and badges as well as the streak counter (removed) breed competitivity, including self-competitivity. Competitivity causes perfectionism. Perfectionism causes academic success. The more competitive Khan is the better, and although this isn't an optimal solution because some people for various reasons couldn't keep up (not just mental reasons, Wifi access is the primary issue with this), it seems better than simply lowering the bar. Sorry if this comment seems dumb, this is just my opinion.

tmac2007-

"Competi[tion] causes perfectionism. Perfectionism causes academic success." I don't think this is absolutely true and if you were to read Sal's book, I'm pretty sure he would disagree with you also.

I will reiterate that I think one reason that many of the game mechanics have been done away with, including the streak feature, is that students were attempting to be perfect with something that has nothing to do with academic success. There are probably dozens of sites right now that want students to gravitate to their content, and if it can be shown that students are making progress at those sites, then parents and teachers and school boards are going to want to use those sites. The folks at Khan Academy probably looked at what they needed to do to keep those students coming back - in the era of COVID - and the upgrades/changes are the result of those investigations. 

I don't see where the bar has been lowered. The content at KA is very strong and anyone who can go thru the material in a methodical way will have a very good foundation for any other avenue of study they want to engage in. I have to say that I am not sure what aspect of competition is missing or has been removed. 

To me, at the end of the day, it's about, do I understand the material? Or, does my student understand the material?

If one answers the questions correctly today as a speed test, but can't remember the material in a week, where's the benefit in that? (I've been teaching many years: I see this all the time.)

WIFI accessibility is a problem across the board for online learning. Connectivity and other technical issues are not limited to those areas where there truly is no way to connect to the the Internet or where that connectivity is faulty. So yes, it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Your comment is not dumb at all. In spirit, yes, competition is good and can contribute to increased academic success. But from my point of view, at least at the moment, we don't want to lose students to their thinking that they are not being perfect or to engage in without-merit competition; there are enough problems getting and keeping students on track. And that's my two cents.

Be safe!

Here are my opinions

1.removing some the earth badges was a bad idea. It really unmotivated some of the new users to try and them. Really, the only one right now would be Work Horse.

2. Artemis and Atlas. Since Atlas itself is basically impossible(there isn't enough topics) and Artemis presumably requires even more, I would think that they maybe should get rid of them. Then again, there kind of are only 3 Black Hole badges right now.

In my opinion, they should never have had a reason to remove any of those badges. As Evan Lewis said, they were removed as a part of removing the missions. Bringing back the missions is a good idea as the missions were well suited to students in an unusual curriculum. It seems to me that the changes we've seen in the past few years are to suit public schools, especially as the pandemic moved people out of the classroom and into Khan Academy and similar, which defeats the purpose of Khan Academy (to provide a fresh way of learning).

Don't quote me on this. I don't know better than the people who work at Khan Academy. But I think they have lost a lot of the appeal for people like me, and they should have at least put out a vote, to see what people use and what they don't.

tmac2007 - 

You've made some good points, and they reflect some of my feelings about some of the changes that have been made at KA over the last year, perhaps longer. Not to be argumentative but here are some contrasting observations: 

• KA, while a non-profit, is still a private entity. They don't necessarily have to ask our permission or opinion about the changes that take place. So...
• KA is allowed to change how they present their material and who they present it to. I've been disappointed to see the streak function go away, for instance, along with some of the high-point badges. But again, KA can make changes as they see fit.
• Perhaps most important, the content on KA is still phenomenal! And the range of material is really broad; where could one go and get an equivalent dose of quality and inclusion? (I know there are detractors - I speak for myself. KA has been very beneficial for me.)

I think this is a situation where we have to take the good with the disappointment of seeing the site change. I don't know how long you've been coming here but when I first started the data that you could get regarding your progress was mind-blowing. Very different from now. Again, I balance that with the fact that I can watch an o-chem video 3 times until the info sinks in. As with many things in life, it's a trade off.

Be well -

K

ＫＥＶＩＮ

That is hardly an argument, seeing as I agree with every one of your points. In response to the first, specifically: I said that they should have. What they do to their website is fully their concern, but it preserves their userbase to poll the users of the site. If you have a doughnut shop, you don't replace your doughnuts with egg rolls unless you know an amount of people equal to or greater than your current customerbase will come in for egg rolls! And an even better solution is to keep the doughnuts and add the egg-rolls. It would be really great if Khan brought back the streaks, the badges, and the missions, without destroying the system they have now. An opt-in basis would be the optimal, so you could decide if you wanted to have a UI for unusual curriculums or a more restrictive UI for standard curriculums. I program websites so I know how hard it would be, but it would certainly improve Khan Academy as a service to mankind.

Honestly, they gutted the thing that made them special.
Khan Academy is basically just a glorified list of YouTube videos now.

I was really excited for the gamification of learning and had been looking forward to sharing that with my daughter.
I’d been shouting from the mountaintops to anyone who would listen to promote it. I had all of my students sign up. I donated every year.

But, I already have many sources of information.—the internet and publishing industry is saturated with education help.

Khan academy was fun and motivating *because* it was gamified.

…I’ve just lost my enthusiasm about it. I waited because I thought they’d be bringing it back and just needed time to get technical things right…

I’m so disappointed they stripped this place down to simply being lists of videos.

I haven't been using khan academy for a while, but by this point I just gave up on the thought of collecting badges. It WAS fun, but i'm still curious on why they took it away.

Randi Matsuzaki

I'm going to respectfully disagree, and also somewhat agree, with some of your points.

• "Khan Academy is basically just a glorified list of YouTube videos now"

Well, when you find a complete youtube channel with the breadth of content and accompanying exercises to go with the instructional videos, please post that here, because I look all the time and I haven't found anything.

• "I was really excited for the gamification of learning and had been looking forward to sharing that with my daughter."

I will agree to a certain point. The game mechanics of KA of 5-6 years ago was also a big reason I kept coming back. It did make many aspects of learning fun, and I did like to see if I could beat the clock, so to speak, and collect badges. But if one is using KA solely as a gaming platform, I don't see that as a long term positive for the learners growth. tmac2007, above makes a great suggestion. "An opt-in basis would be the optimal, so you could decide if you wanted to have a UI for unusual curriculums or a more restrictive UI for standard curriculums." I think something like this serve both perspectives. But, I'm going to guess that that would require a lot of bandwidth, perhaps more that KA has available.

• "But, I already have many sources of information.—the internet and publishing industry is saturated with education help."

Again true, but again from my cursory investigation, I have found the quality to be uneven. 

• "Khan academy was fun and motivating *because* it was gamified."

KA is fun because Sal is a great teacher/instructor and so are the rest of the "tutors". The art history courses, the grammar course, electrical engineering course, are all fun and educational because those instructors bring a combination of knowledge with delivery of that knowledge that I personally have not found elsewhere in a comprehensive, multi-subject site.

• "I’m so disappointed they stripped this place down to simply being lists of videos."

I think if you look more closely you'll discover that it's much more than a  list of videos. Thanks to the videos, the text articles and the exercises, I've learned so much, and I did it for a pittance in donations to the site. No one site will be able to provide all the "answers" and teaching styles are unique and may not resonate with everyone. I've said earlier that KA can change how they present their material and if a watering-down of the game mechanics is the way they want to proceed, that's KA's prerogative. We still live in a free society, thankfully, and you are free to gravitate to a site where you think your child's educational needs will be met. 

I think Kevin might be in the corner of either everyone gets a prize, or no one gets a prize. To me that seems to be an easy out, not that anybody has to prove anything to anyone of course. However it was satisfying to me to look back at my progression and see those badges of achievement without even knowing I was doing it in the first place. Not that it matters, but I'm a 48 and didn't take grade school seriously, so this site has been a blessing to me as I can't afford college in todays world. Finally, I would agree with tmac2007 in regards to having an "opt-in" basis, that way no gets the feeling of being left behind or inadequacy, just a good solid learning experience.

Tony K - not sure how you came to "Kevin might be in the corner of either everyone gets a prize, or no one gets a prize", but I'm all for differences of opinion as long as government buildings are not stormed in the process. I have logged onto KA daily for at least ten years, so I've witnessed many changes, some which I didn't agree with, but I still think it's an amazing resource, and that sentiment has not changed.

I've seen this argument about badges and as a newer user i've never seen Khan's former gaming glory(or gaming garbage depending on what side you support). I think that while some badges were certainty a distraction, badges seemed to be a motivation for many. As a user now, i can see that badges encouraged people to take learning to another level, to participate in discussions. Without them, many people may not be as motivated. Without badges, people might as well watch the videos on youtube(which isn't exactly a bad thing). At Khans current state, badges are really just milestones which people rarely hit. There isn't really a reason to grind. But thats just my opinion and i'm sure many people would disagree.