[authorfly]

> Research shows low-stakes assessment is when the moment of learning often happens

Okay, but psychology research like this needs to be taken with context on long term behavior. Is this advice practical? No, not in this case. The problem is that very few people can actively learn that way for multiple hours in one day, let alone be motivated for studying in that intense way for subjects they do not like. Any barrier will stop them. That research applies to cramming for exams, when stressed, which most EdTech isn't really useful for (at that point, people are learning intensely anyway). This human nature has not changed.

And your suggestions (not to be rude) are to excite kids about the subjects they find least motivating. But the problem is already motivation.

Youtube is motivating because it is fun. It might not work, but it fits the motivation level you have.

Why not forget about the strong moats/tendencies of EdTech projects to fail to revolutionise, forget them targetting parents, and either pick a subgroup of learners who actively do want to change how they learn, or work on the motivation problem? Why are some kids so much less motivated to learn Math than others? Should we change that and how can we?##

Here's an example I find interesting: The western world accomplished bringing Biology from dominantly male to an equally balanced subject. How did that change happen? We benefit from all these women researching in Biology. Could it happen to other sciences? Or the reverse? These kind of questions interest me.

[noemit]

Actually, people learn for hours this way. It just needs to be tempered with support. This is literally what a teacher does when they give you an assignment, give you feedback on it, then give you another activity. You're thinking of hard testing - where you get a lot of things wrong. I did research on how to keep learners engaged, and as long as they were getting over 50-60 precent of the problems/activities "right" they kept going - so we actually built an adaptive system that optimized for this type of growth, which means throwing them an easier question every now and then so that they have some confidence to go with the knowledge.

The reason some kids are not motivated to do math is because they believe they are bad at it, and nobody likes to do something that makes them feel dumb or not good. The kids that love math (like myself - I remember I was SO excited about math as a kid) are good at it, and teachers are constantly complimenting them.

You can hack the brain to feeling good while learning. I just need like 200M but I might be able to do it without.

[authorfly]

So that adaptive system sounds really cool and useful for those bursts of formative assessment. And if the baseline is 100% boring textbook reading, ofcourse that is better. But if they work 9-5 every day, why don't schools do that at the moment do you think?

I don't mean to be negative, but can you name a research paper where a normal students 7 hour school day was changed to formative assessment all week long for a semester or more, and the grades improved? Or identify why students on Duolingo don't tend to learn as well as those taking in person classes? Why does the effect of the Testing Effect/formative assessment tail off when it is used more and over greater time periods?

The point is, the research on learning methods usually researches them in isolation and in 5-15-60 minute study sessions. Maybe doing 15 minutes of formative assessment improves your grades, but puts you off doing other work or makes you less effective in later lessons, when done regularly. There is a lack of useful longitudinal research in Education for the depressing reason that the two main effects are your genetic background, and private teacher attention.

I don't think kids are not motivated about math because they are bad at it. It doesn't seem like a subject that most kids see themselves using every day, because the adults they see around them don't seem to (and in fact largely don't) use Maths. While I value and enjoy Maths, and know how knowing maths makes a massive difference to your experience or life, kids can't, and really won't have good reasons to understand or be motivated through that. e.g. it's not a fear of negativity (though in class under pressure it is). It's an absence of motivation in the first place.