Assignment 1 — Comparison of MATHia and Khan Academy PDF

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Assignment 1 — Comparison of Mathia and Khan Academy My focus was on the design and functionality of the features provided by each of them. All the observations are based on experimenting with the Algebra 1 course. Both of the systems allow the teacher to manage the content, to have different set of questions in the course and monitor the student’s activity and for each student to solve the questions providing hints, adjusting the difficulty and tracking progress of each unit along the way. Strengths and Weaknesses:

Khan Academy

Carnegie Learning

1.

When a teacher logs in, the courses looks appealing, clearly defined and managed so it is used by people all over the world in 36 different languages [1].

Here the course naming doesn’t make sense so this might alienate the teachers to give up before even starting [2] and the standards are mostly based on United States in 6-12 languages so people in the rest of the world will be reluctant to even think of using this.

2.

The interface is very intuitive with each page having a section for help related to that particular page like when the students are being added, it is very clear how to add them and there is a section in the dashboard for managing it [3]. Even if someone had doubt over how to do something in a page, they can refer to the help section for that page or if they have a question, they can search that in the FAQs and read instructions about where to go and how to do it [5].

It is not clear how to perform some of the functions such as adding the students you have to click on roster which is not obvious and when you go to the help center there is only a picture with captioned arrows for most of the answers with no directions on how to reach that particular page like for adding students there is just one step but no information is specified on how to reach that step [4]. For most of the answers I had to go through the user guide and think it over.

For the students it is easier to understand how the interface works. Also, Similarly, for the student you have to start functionalities like sketching by a pen on the module by completing the overview screen for solving by doing are a good section which you cannot skip, it seems irrelevant to make it compulsory so that the

addition which cognitive load.

doesn’t

increase

the students cannot skip it even if the goal is to get users get used to the interface. Also, while using it I got a network error and clicking on some of the buttons in Carnegie Learning like “Module Overview” which are important, gets redirected to “Page not found” [7, 8].

3.

The dashboard displays the progress in terms of units done using bar chart and percentage only. The feedback is too little for the teacher to keep track of each students understanding [6]. There is not enough evidence for a teacher to know when is the right time for intervention for a particular student.

It is easier for a teacher to get a measure of the students’ current progress and to assess it which is much detailed by seeing the graphs displaying the progress based on the pace of the students. The APLSE report [10] provides relevant information to the instructor so that they can provide interventions on time to the students who need it the most.

4.

The problems are not divided into steps so Instant feedback in a step by step manner the students are forced into making use of confirms the effect after every action and hints when they are unable to reach the provides deeper learning. correct answer [9].

From which system do you think students will learn more? I think it depends on many factors like students and teacher’s prior knowledge, how much they are comfortable with using technology, etc. Carnegie Learning looks like it is not something accessible for everyone and teachers and students might need to put extra effort into learning about the functionalities before they are able to use it productively so for students who do not have a habit of using technology it might cause distractions from the main goals and an increase in cognitive load which can harm their learning more than improving it whereas in Khan academy the flow is easier to understand for a layman and even if the dashboard function is too much for them or the technology is not available to all the students due to socio-economic factors they can just put the videos available on YouTube channel of khan academy in a big display for everyone in the class to hear.

It is difficult for a teacher to properly assess the progress of an individual student in Khan Academy which does not justify its use as a substitute for a traditional 5 day classroom lecture but it can still be used very productively in a flipped classroom model so that the teacher can spend more one on one time helping the students. On the other hand, previous research on Carnegie Learning has shown in the past that its use in a classroom setting with time divided between lab sessions and traditional teacher interactions provided better results.

For each system, what is one way in which you might make it more effective? I think for improving Carnegie Learning my main advice would be to spend more resources on user experience and testing because I know that their scope is narrow only focusing on math right now but before expanding into more broader subjects or concepts in math itself it will be a better idea to make it more accessible and usable from the students and teachers point of view. I don’t think that the design is good when the users have to be provided with a guide to tell how the system works, especially when it comes with a product which students will be using. Give them more encouragement like when the kids login in Khan Academy or they solve a problem they get a happy animated character bouncing on the screen or a star which gives them encouragement to move further. For Khan Academy I can think that they should work on adding more functionalities to their courses one by one and to think about how they can use product manager to make their product look more appealing to use in the classrooms because they have the necessary content and it seems good enough to be used by Bill Gates to teach his children so they should focus on widespread around the world. For both of the systems, my advice will be to move towards age-specific design like consider adding different words, difficulty level or complexity in the design of interface based on separate age groups. This will decrease their cognitive load and make them independent learners instead of being told by their parents and teachers about where to click and how to use it, they should be able to rather intuitively move from one problem to another with the tutor keeping track of students' level of understanding and progress in each topic focusing on self-regulated learning providing information to the teacher so that they can intervene if necessary.

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