Why are Daily Goals better than the Wheel?
We've explained how Daily Goals work and what students should do here, but we thought it'd be useful to go into the problems with the wheel and why we think Daily Goals are an improvement.
Clear Targets
With the wheel it wasn't clear how much work a student had to do each day; they knew they should get rid of all orange and red from their wheel, but how many questions this would take was unclear. This meant a student had no idea how long it would take to complete Tassomai that day.
The Daily Goal is much clearer - student’s know exactly how much they need to do each day.
Discrete Goals
The wheel would decay constantly, and at a rate which wasn't always clear; this meant that students could get rid of all the orange in their wheel but when their teacher looked the next day it might have all come back. This obviously wasn't fair on students.
As the Daily Goal is split into chunks, a student can complete their Tassomai for the day and know that when their teacher checks it will be obvious.
Easier to Track
The constant decay also meant it was harder for teachers and parents to track; they couldn't easily tell if a student had spread their work out over several days.
The Daily Goal means there is a clear record of whether or not a student has done enough each day.
Encourages Interleaving and Spacing
Interleaving and spacing are two of the key principles behind Tassomai - we want students to do a little bit each day and spread their learning. Students would often cram the night before teachers checked to make sure their wheel was green in the morning.
The Daily Goal means that students are encouraged to do a small amount every day, a much healthier way to use the program, and more effective.
Harder to Fall Behind
Students often complained that if they fell behind by a few days it would take hours to get on track - and that the wheel being red was demotivating.
The Daily Goal has a maximum of 60 correct questions - so the amount they're asked to do never becomes unmanageable, making it easier to get back into the routine.
Progress is Less Central
Although progress is no longer shown inside the wheel, students can still check their progress in the subjects tab. The algorithm is still pushing students to complete the program - the Daily Goal is set so that if it's completed four times each week the student will hit their target.
The only exception is when the Daily Goal reaches 60 - if this happens and the student wants to complete the course they should complete their Bonus Goal as well, and try to do this more often than four times each week. The Daily Goal is capped because, in our experience, when a student fell this far behind with the wheel they couldn't get back on track. The daily goal sets a more manageable target, even if it means students may not complete the entire course.
Can't go Backwards
Occasionally, if a student did poorly on a quiz, they would see the wheel reverse - with a green section going orange. This meant they had to do even more work to get the red and orange out of the wheel.
This can no longer happen with Daily Goals, as the target is calculated at the start of each day and is fixed. However, it's worth bearing in mind that if a student's accuracy is poor then their Daily Goal will begin to increase since students aren't progressing through the course as quickly as expected.
We hope that this explains why we feel that Daily Goals will be better than the wheel, and please keep getting in touch to let us know what you think - we always want to hear feedback!