We’re constantly listening to user feedback and looking at our data insights to help us improve Tassomai as much as possible. From the start of the next academic year there will be several big updates to Tassomai. In addition to new content for Key Stage 3 in English, maths and science, Tassomai will now provide targeted teaching videos in-app.

Starting next year, KS4 students will be shown videos specifically chosen by our algorithm to help them with areas where they are struggling. These videos have been created by our in-house content team to tackle the areas where our students struggle the most and our research has shown that they will increase Tassomai’s impact, making it more effective and engaging, so we’re really excited about it.

** N.B. Since publication of this article, all tutorial videos are now available to view on the Tassomai YouTube channel.**

Instruction with Impact

For years, we’ve seen strong evidence that using Tassomai increases student recall and outcomes, but we’re frequently asked for the program to link to other resources to help struggling students. We’ve hesitated to do this for fear that this could break the flow of usage or, through unfocused or unsuitable content, actually reduce the impact of the platform.

Instead, what we wanted to do was to make sure that instructional content was relevant, focused and complemented Tassomai’s adaptive quizzing and feedback… so we took our time to do the research first and build the best content possible, ensuring the videos we created enhanced the learning experience, and were highly targeted and focussed.

Tassomai has always used its quizzing platform to test, diagnose and deliver therapy, but these videos, served to each user at the moment they need them, will greatly increase the therapeutic aspect of Tassomai’s service.

Videos Done Better

The detailed profile we build for each of our students means that we are uniquely placed to offer highly targeted videos. Students are only shown content that we know will be adding value - always timely, relevant to that specific learner, and helping them to get the most from Tassomai.

We know students can ‘tune out’ when they watch videos on other platforms, so ours are short and sweet (60-90 seconds) and will relate directly to the questions that follow. Keeping it quick, relevant and not overwhelming students with too much material keeps it impactful - while following it with a quiz ensures students stay engaged.

Attainment and Retention

We tested the impact of these videos while participating in EDUCATE, a programme developed by UCL and the IOE to help EdTech companies make decisions based on solid, evidence based research.

We created videos for some of our trickiest questions, and showed them to some students to see how their attainment and retention changed compared to the control group - the results of our research were extremely positive.

There were around 800 students in the control group, who were not shown the video, and the same number of students watched the video. We then looked at accuracy for one question, which the video was targeting. For students in the control group their accuracy was 28% - this jumped to 71% for students who’d watched the video. It was therefore clear that it improved short-term attainment, but crucially it improved long-term retention as well…

One week later the students who’d answered the question correctly were shown it again to test their retention. This time 42% of the students from the control group answered it correctly, compared to 52% of the students who’d seen the video the week before - so it boosted long-term retention as well.

The details of our extensive research project are going to be published in an education research journal shortly (following peer-review) and we will be presenting our findings at the PiXL science conference in July - please come along to find out more.

We know that these new Tassomai videos will help your students to learn what they need to know, help them remember and ultimately help their outcomes. We hope you like what you see when they launch next September!

FAQS

Who will be shown videos?

Videos will be shown to students just before they take a quiz covering a specification point which they are struggling with. This is determined by our personalised algorithm, and is based on how many videos that user has been shown and their historical accuracy. This is to ensure that they are highly targeted and personalised.

Only KS4 science students will be shown videos.

Do students have to watch the videos?

When we suggest that a student watches a video to improve their experience on Tassomai, they are able to skip the video instead if they do not want to watch them.

Students can also change their settings so that they are never shown videos. If a student is using the app, they can set it so they only see videos when they are connected to WiFi.

Will this mean completing the daily goal takes longer?

This should have very little impact on how long students have to spend on Tassomai. Although students will not be answering questions when they watch the video, it will improve their long-term and short-term accuracy, meaning they have to answer fewer questions to complete the daily goal.

In addition to this no video is longer than 90 seconds, so even if it does add time to the daily goal, it should not add a significant amount of time to the user.

If users feel that the videos are taking too long, they can skip them.

A lot of my students answer questions on their phones - will this use up their mobile data?

Watching videos on a phone can use up mobile data. To prevent this from being an issue, students using our app can change their settings so that they are only shown videos when connected to WiFi.

This is not possible if students login to the normal website on their phones; we would recommend they download the app if they do not want to use up their mobile data.