Failing 15% is the best way to learn

In a new study by Wilson, R.C., Shenhav, A., Straccia, M. et al.  they have found a sweet spot, where the learning is neither too easy nor too difficult. This sweet spot is when the student fails about 15% at the time.

It also ties in to a book we’ve read recently at Cortexio, Hooked by Nir Eyal, where the Hooked model explains how modern software is built to increase user interaction. By giving the user (or student) a variable reward the chances of the user returning to the application is much greater. (This is also why gambling can be such an addiction).

As a teacher it can seem like a daunting job to create individual learning paths for all students where they all have a 85% success rate.

This is why adaptive learning systems like Cortexio are so powerful. Cortexio creates an unique learning path for each student based on their performance where we aim at a 85% success rate.

More about our adaptive learning algorithms will be described in coming posts.

Wilson, R.C., Shenhav, A., Straccia, M. et al. The Eighty Five Percent Rule for optimal learning. Nat Commun 10, 4646 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12552-4

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12552-4

Customized Course

Hypocampus is a site for Medical students built on Cortexio.

Since the launch of Cortexio, we have built the system on high quality materials: Text, images and questions.

The text has been divided into books that often correspond to a course – but not fully, and not for everyone. Courses differ depending on the school, year, teacher, etc. That is why we are working hard to make it possible to reorder, select and add material to a course based on the material in the library together with material created by students and teachers. The material does not necessarily have to be chapters but can be something that supports the studies: presentations, documents, pictures etc.

The university students in Cortexio can create their own course or follow a course created by another student. It is also possible to make the course hidden, or only open to those who are invited to the course.

As the owner of a course you can also make additions to the material directly in chapters.

We are also working on the opportunity to create Quiz for a course – well-selected questions on the course, based on self-composed and existing questions. Here there is some work left to make question creation easy to use before it is opened up to all students.