Feedback for Drills

[Coleman]

Aw ni ce!

I recently started making some chapters at the Beginner Bambara level that I have been calling “Drills”.

By Drills, I mean question sets that are meant to be a quick and mobile-friendly way to workout your skills when you’re on the go. Thus far, I have been making them 10 questions long.

I would love to hear you all’s thoughts!

• How long does a set take you?

• Does the number of questions feel about right for one session?

• Do the sets feel too easy, too hard, or about right for quick practice activity?

• Is anything about how the Drill sets work confusing?

• Anything that feels especially useful (or frustrating)?

Aw ni baraji!

[gregorio]

@Coleman

• How long does a set take you?
• Does the number of questions feel about right for one session?
• Do the sets feel too easy, too hard, or about right for quick practice activity?
• Is anything about how the Drill sets work confusing?
• Anything that feels especially useful (or frustrating)?

• (On laptop) 3:00 for the Presentatives set, 2:30 for the Equatives set, 2:10 for the Equatives and Presentatives set
• About right
• About right for an quick round
• Ayi
• Two things:
  • When I get the question right and press Enter, it resets the question. I wish instead that pressing Enter sent me to the next question, which feels more natural.
  • Some of the audio files are of different gain levels, for example your “Mun don?” in the Presentatives set is a bit louder than the other audio files. It may be worth the hassle to normalize the peak-Hz and/or LUFS for all the audio files so people don’t get one file that is surprisingly louder than the others while listening with earbuds. I know that’s a lot of work though.

[Coleman]

I ni ce @gregorio

@gregorio

When I get the question right and press Enter, it resets the question. I wish instead that pressing Enter sent me to the next question, which feels more natural.

• Noted for the future!

@gregorio

Some of the audio files are of different gain levels, for example your “Mun don?” in the Presentatives set is a bit louder than the other audio files. It may be worth the hassle to normalize the peak-Hz and/or LUFS for all the audio files so people don’t get one file that is surprisingly louder than the others while listening with earbuds. I know that’s a lot of work though.

• This is actually very helpful to hear! You know what’s funny is that I literally had just redone the audio of the Presentatives set because I thought that the gain level was too low (it was comfortable to listen to with headphones only when set to maximum volume; I couldn’t hear it over people around me in a cafe if it was lower). It sounds like a might have overdone it. In any case, I think that you are totally right that there some be some default normalization done when I record the audio from the admin area. I’ve noted down the idea and will discuss with my developer soon to see what’s possible! In the short term, I might need to just need to re-record the Presentative audio again

[Coleman]

Follow-up question for anyone!

How many question sets should appear in a single page/chapter?

• 1 ideally
• A few (up to 3)
• A bunch (up to 5)

Basically, I am curious if you all feel that having more than one question set appear on page is problematic or not.

Here’s an example of an older Drills chapter that has two sets if you want to see what I mean:

Question Words II | An ka taa

[Coleman]

I ni ce, @gregorio !

Thanks for weighing in. Care to share why you think that 1 question set per page/chapter is ideal?

For comparison, I made a new Drills set for “Non-Verbal Practice”.

And it’s in two places right now.

1. In a single Drills chapter listed within Unit 2 of the course:

   

   It’s "Set II” within the page.

2. In a separate chapter (not currently listed directly in the course).

What I’m concerned about is having the sections/topics (e.g., “8. Non-Verbal Sentences Practices” like seen above) of the course overloaded with assignments (e.g., Grammar, Workbook I, Workbook II, Drills I, Drills II, Speaking, Extra Practice, Extra Credit, etc).

If I put one set into each chapter then my thinking would be that I would only list one “Workbook” and/or one “Drills” per topic. If there were additional ones, I would put them all into “Extra Practice”.

Here’s two dorky diagrams of the underlying difference:

One Set Per Chapter

Multiple Sets Per Chapter

Hakɛto b’à la! Sorry if that’s too much information haha

[Bettina]

@Coleman

…you’re on the go. Thus far, I have been making them 10 questions long.I would love to hear you all’s thoughts!How long does a set take you?Does the number of questions feel about right for one session?Do the sets feel too easy, too hard, or about right for quick practice activity?Is anything about how the Drill sets work confusing?Anything that feels especially useful (or frustrating)?Aw ni baraji!

Aw ni ce!
This is my testing:
Presentatives

It took me 6min
From my phone
Amount of the questions just right
Nothing unclear
I like that I can go forth and back
I like that there is an audio to listen to pronunciation
I like that there is literally translation in the end
I like the new design with the dots
Pronunciation of the first audio is much louder than the others
Confusing: “Select the translation”, but it was transcription (attached photo).

Equatives
6min
From my phone
…tè…yè is translated as IS…IS instead of IS.NOT…IS (attached photos)

In the Equatives-Drill-Chapter you use the translation IS…IS or IS.NOT…IS while in the other drills you use EQU…EQU or EQU.NEG…EQU (attached photos)

Nice that it’s also a chance to repeat certain expressions (attached photo)

Equatives and Presentatives

6min
From my phone
Audios are louder than the other drills (except first audio of presentatives -they are the same level)

Non verbal

10min
From my phone
I like the design with the dots better
I prefer 10 questions than 20
Audio is nice to have but not necessary. In public transport I cannot listen to it without earphones
Confusing: the first 2 pairs were a bit confusing for me. It took me some time to figure it out (attached photo)

Confusing: with Kamalen I need the possessive marker “ka”? So it’s different to “n ce” where I don’t need “ka” (attached photo)

[Bettina]

@Coleman

…Follow-up question for anyone!How many question sets should appear in a single page/chapter?1 ideallyA few (up to 3)A bunch (up to 5)0votersBasically, I am curious if you all feel that having more than one question set appear on page is problematic or not.Here’s an example of an older Drills chapter that has two sets if you want to see what I mean:

I prefer just 1 question set in a single page.
In mobile it’s not recognizable at firs sight, that there is another question set coming on the same site (attached photo)

I liked the best the design with the dots, just 10 questions instead of 20 and just one question set in a single page. This gives me the feeling to be able to do a really quick repetition. When I see a second question set I’m always a bit disappointed that I am not already done with the exercise

[Coleman]

I ni ce, n terimuso @Bettina !

This is amazing feedback. Ala k’i sara!

I’m going to take sometime to process it all (and fix some of the “bugs” and/or content issues that you mentioned) and then I’ll circle back to you

But my immediate takeaway is this:

• You and @gregorio both naturally prefer one exercise set per page/chapter
• You like 10 questions using the “progress dots” (as opposed to 20 questions with the numbers)
• Audio is nice to have but the exercises are useful without it regardless so I shouldn’t hesitate to “publish/release” them even before audio is included
• It took you about 6 minutes for each 10 question set

[gregorio]

RE the “One Set Per Chapter“ vs “Multiple Sets Per Chapter” question, I think it’s fine either way, and great as it is. One personal preference though is that I find it a bit confusing to go into one section to see three more drills when I expect only one drill per section. I also found it a little confusing at first to see a drill section in the grammar lesson.

My thought: Have each section be one thing. First the grammar section (and maybe the flashcards too?) add at the bottom of the page a little “Mark as complete” button so that when you go back to the home page, it adds a little check mark to the lesson.
Then the user moves to the next set, and when they complete that the check mark shows up.
For the extra practice, instead of a check, add a as to indicate that they’ve completed said bonus and that this is indeed beyond what is expected.

The Speaking practices would need to be checked manually by the user since there’s no way to add that feature into padlet.

Grammar + flashcards
Drills 1
Drills 2
Workbook
Speaking
Bonus Drills 1
Bonus Workbook 1
Bonus Drills 2

It’s a lot more hand-holdy but it would help people organize their progress a little .

But I’m just one person. @Bettina I bɛ̀n miiriya la wa? bɛ̀n = agree, miiriya = idea

[Bettina]

@gregorio

But I’m just one person. @Bettina I bɛ̀n miiriya la wa? bɛ̀n = agree, miiriya = idea

I ka hakilina ka nyi @gregorio

[Coleman]

Aw ni ce, @gregorio ni @Bettina !

Very interesting and useful feedback. Maybe we can discuss briefly before or after class, Greg, since there’s one or two small things that I want to be clear one (mostly stemming from the ambiguity of the words lile “section”, etc — your diagram helped but I want to make sure that I follow your thinking so that I can note it down right )

I would note that the name of the assignment type label “Grammar” is a little misleading at this point.

A better name (which I’ve been considering) might be “Textbook” since each chapter really is a hybrid one that combines a video lesson, a text lesson, vocab + flashcards and some exercises.

The reason that Grammar chapters are hybrid and full of different kinds of content is partially related to way that I built out the content piece by piece. At first, I had a video and then I added a text and then vocab, etc., and it didn’t make sense to have a separate “page” for each item at the beginning.

Bettina, you’ve seen this in the Advanced Beginner coursebook. It’s not yet a full and proper “course”, so it doesn’t have unit pages (e.g. “Unit 1”) with various topics (e.g., “Weather”) that all have separate assignments (e.g., “Grammar + Drills + Workbook + Speaking”) for teach topic.

Instead, it’s a “Book” with “Chapters” that include a little bit of everything.

Like this one:

When it comes to the Beginner Bambara course, I have often asked people if they think that I should break out the parts of the Units topics such that each assignment/chapter is only thing.

Like this:

Beyond the nice idea about upgrading/expanding the “Mark as Complete” feature to apply to individual chapters/pages/assignments, it sounds like you, @gregorio, think that maybe it would good to potentially break out the parts into distinct assignment types (with only 1 of each type per topic) and then throw everything else into “Extra” or the like. Am I hearing you right? And is that also what you think might be ideal @Bettina?

[Coleman]

A little update for you, @Bettina:

• I went ahead and redid the rogue loud audio in Presentatives so that it matches the loudness of the others in set
• I fixed all the typos that you caught in the feedback and instructions across all the Drills

I ni baraji!

[Bettina]

@Coleman

think that maybe it would good to potentially break out the parts into distinct assignment types (with only 1 of each type per topic) and then throw everything else into “Extra” or the like. Am I hearing you right? And is that also what you think might be idea

This would be ideal

[gregorio]

@Coleman

it sounds like you, @gregorio, think that maybe it would good to potentially break out the parts into distinct assignment types (with only 1 of each type per topic) and then throw everything else into “Extra” or the like.

Yeah, that’s correct. It’s not a huge deal though, so if you prefer how it currently is, then that’s also fine.