Intelligent Practice is Siyavula’s premium homework practice service. It was implemented in 2012 and is now been used by over 60 South African schools. Community involvement is one of the three pillars on which Siyavula stands, and so we welcome educators to be apart of the development process for Intelligent Practice.
Siyavula has begun hosting termly Intelligent Practice community events in Cape Town, Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape (we’ll be heading to Durban soon). At these events, we ask educators using the service in their classrooms to help us improve and contextualise the service to their teaching needs. Educators have the opportunity to network with colleagues making use of Intelligent Practice and to discover new usage methods, features, tips and tricks and therefor get the most out of Intelligent Practice.
Below is a summary of what was learnt at our community events held during first term:
1. Features of Intelligent Practice
- Questions increase with difficulty: as the learner progresses through the questions they will notice that the questions adjust to their personal level of mastery. I.e. weaker learners will see easier questions and stronger learners will see difficult questions.
- Topics expand into their subsections: you can choose to be as specific or broad as you would like when selecting what to practise.
Simply click on the + sign next to the chapter topic:
- See the learner’s individual progress: when you are viewing the Teacher’s Dashboard, you can click on the name of any learner and then scroll down and see feedback on that individual learner’s progress. Follow this link to see what the Teacher’s Dashboard looks like.
- Report an error on a specific question: if you or your learners experience any technical errors whilst using the Intelligent Practice service, you can report this to us via the “report an error” button. This ensures that we know exactly which question you were practising when the error occurred.
- Both public and private schools have access to all three grades (Grade 10, 11 and 12): learners and educators can easily choose to practise sections from Grade 10, 11 and 12 making the tool suitable for revision and2. Intelligent Practice educator wish list
- Learners can “cheat” the system by only practising easy questions over and over again. Educators wish for us to make this as unappealing as possible – it is suggested that the number of points assigned to a question decreases as the learner repeats that question. I.e If the question counts 3 points and the learner gets it right several times – if the learner chooses to practice the same question again, it will only count 2 points, then 1 point.
- Learners wish to see more detailed feedback on their progress. They would like to see the equivalent of the Teacher’s Dashboard, but highlighting only their own progress.
- Educators would like to see all the questions available in a section before assigning it for homework – this would ideally be sorted by difficulty levels.
- Educators would like the ability to print out the Teacher’s Dashboard for each learner – this would be helpful for facilitating discussions at Parent – Teacher meetings.
- Learners would like to see their level of mastery for each topic in Intelligent Practice.
- Educators want to see a list of bugs that have been recorded and an indication of which bugs have been fixed and which are being worked on.
- Educators wish to set the level of difficulty for their class.
- Educators wish for more control in the sections their learners practice. See the questions at the sub, sub-top level.
- We need to find a way to ensure learners stay motivated to use the service – we are encouraging educators to help us here, any suggestions are welcome!
3. Improvements to the service
- You are welcome to keep up with our latest developments, new features and bug fixes by following Carl’s blog: http://carlscheffler.blogspot.com/
- Siyavula has an entire team dedicated to creating new question content and we are looking for more qualified people to join us.Our team is continuously building more question templates (in both subjects and across all grades) and will do so throughout the year.
Find out how you and your learners can benefit form incorporating Intelligent Practice into your classroom and become part of the Siyavula – Education Technology community. Whether you are interested in trialing the service or just need more information email carine@siyavula.com and get started.
