Learn queue never goes down?

when i joined i got confused and added 25 grammar points as well lol. maybe have a special notification the first time a person completes a batch explaining that “You’ve met your daily goal, you have the option to continue to exceed your daily goal”

4 Likes

I think we can probably do better in this regard. It’s very (too) easy to just keep studying things, and then get overwhelmed. There will always be those that want to blaze through vs those that are in it for the long haul. I’ll have a chat to the team about how we can make that aspect of progression more obvious for the user.

I also didn’t use WK for the lack of control, but can’t say it’s predatory. Just a very different model that requires the potential user to be willing to invest a lot of time upfront. Something some of us can and some of us can’t do.

Within the field of teaching, there are very few learning experts, which is one of the reasons we don’t really want to touch user freedom. To be a learning expert, you need to-

  • Know and meet the needs of the individual student.
  • Know the content that is being taught extremely well, and be able to preempt snags that people will hit along the way to mastery.
  • Be passionate about the material, not just knowledgeable.
  • Encourage self-directed growth, allowing the student to find their feet themselves.

We may not be the world leading authority on learning Japanese, but I can guarantee that we care more about our students than almost any teacher I’ve ever had.

Just a general thought that we should all be careful about who we label experts, and what is required to warrant that label.

7 Likes

It’s not really the thread to air my grievances for Wanikani, so I won’t go on, maybe I’ll write something up.

Regarding the conversation on “language learning expert” I can appreciate this concern. As a language educator I tend to have sympathy to people who just want a relatively easy system to just learn. Clocking in and clocking out, just doing the work.

My deep worry, is that meta learning is one of the core skills to success. Learning how to learn in general as well as what works best for oneself, is key to learning outcomes in the long run. You have to take control of your own education to be successful.

Either way, add this to the pile of clunky onboarding to Bunpro that bounces of new users. If I could wipe my memory of Bunpro to help new users, ima. Bit tainted as I know too much to be helpful.

3 Likes

I read many posts, but this is my first time replying to one, and that is because this is just one annoying Bunpro feature. Can someone explain to me what the point of having that Learn number is? If I set the batch size to 3 which is what I had before, I will see a 3 there all the time. Even if I’m in the middle of studying grammar points, after I study one item, that number doesn’t go down to 2, or to 1 after studying 2 items. And I can’t stop a session after 1 item anyway and go back later to finish the remaining 2 items. Only after the quiz, the queue number changes to 0, but right away changes back to 3. In what circumstances would it ever show a different number?

It would be more useful if we could instead set the number of items we want to study per day and have the Learn queue show how many items are left to be studied for the day. If we wanted to study more items, we could still click on it to study more but knowing that we’ve already completed the goal for the day.

As for all the talk about Bunpro giving flexibility, it appears to assume that you study once a day, all grammar points for the day in one shot, with no flexibility to study less than the set batch size. I study a little in the morning and a little in the evening, and I want to study a set number of grammar points a day, As is, I set my batch size to 1, but I’m often having to go through the grammar point list to check how many items I studied for the day to make sure I study enough items and/or don’t study too many. And I don’t think I’m in the minority regarding wanting to study a set number of items per day. How many posts in this forum talk about how many items you should study per day? How many posts talk about how many items you should study per session?

3 Likes

Idk
I mean, I understand where you’re coming from, but personally I really enjoy the batch size method because I don’t only study once a day. But when I do study, I like having a set amount to do at a time, with the number still there for later. If I feel like doing a batch I will. If I feel up for it later in the day I’ll do another batch :upside_down_face: it might be harder to keep track of total per day if you’re doing 1 grammar per “batch” continuously throughout the day, but I remember if I’ve already done my batch of 5 or not.

For me the learn number is what I wanna do right now. Not later, not total for the day, but right now what can I do. I need the batch learn button there, otherwise I’ll see the daily number due and see it as a task that has to be done, rather than a quick learning burst for fun. Personally, having the learn act like review would be suffocating, and when I did manage to “finish” them, I wouldn’t go for more later because “I’m already done for the day”. I see how some people might want that, but to me it would stifle growth.

I don’t ever wanna be “done” learning ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ

3 Likes

You can add grammar points to your review queue directly from their respective pages so it is entirely possible to what you want to do. The batch is there for people who want to do it in one session. Having said that I do see where you are coming from and I do wonder if the devs might think it makes sense to have an option for the batch size to be per session or per day. The ability to custom queue and manage what you are learning is a little lacking currently.

The reason there are posts talking about how much to study per day is due to future review load. Discussions about per session are probably less fruitful as it highly depends on the individual (review load does as well but the discussions are normally about predicting future work and not how much work one can do in a one off sesson/day).

2 Likes

I thought I would just chime in here. We are looking into making it more clear how much you have studied each day and letting you set a soft limit of how many you want to do with a gentle reminder that you have already done your daily goal when you try to do more (but still letting you do more).

11 Likes

I don’t think you understood me. I don’t need to go to the grammar pages to add them to the review queue. I set my batch size to 1, so I can just click on the Learn button whenever I need to learn a grammar point, so adding grammar points is not an issue. The problem is that I often don’t know how many grammar points I already studied that day, so I have to go to the grammar pages and look up how many I studied.

Neither one of you explained the purpose of that Learn number and under which circumstances it would change to a number other than your set batch size number, i.e. that it actually has a purpose. My point is that, from what I can see, the Learn queue number is useless, and being there only causes confusion, so it should either be removed or be used for better purposes, like the number of items left to be studied for the day.

I never mentioned eliminating the batch size. I’m only talking about the Learn queue number that shows on top of the dashboard.

2 Likes

I understood you fine - I was just offering the only current work around I could think of for you (I.e., if you want to, for example, study 3 points a day but broken up in different sessions then add those 3 points to your review queue directly from their grammar pages and then study them in separate sessions as and when they come up in your reviews). I was also trying to agree with you that currently things are clunky regarding controlling your queue.

As it is, batch and learn are identical. The current purpose of it is to study a batch of a fixed size without having to navigate to extra pages, etc.

Regardless, I think what Jake mentioned probably solves your issues, right?

2 Likes

Your workaround would make things worse because if I don’t have time to study all 3 items when they come up for review, the other reviews due for the day would pile up behind the new items and I wouldn’t have a way to review them throughout the day. I can delay studying a new grammar point, but delaying a review screws up the SRS timings.

1 Like

I see. I had assumed you would finish studying each day. Well, as I said, I think what Jake mentioned will solve your issues and until then I guess just keep a tally on a scrap of paper or something (笑)

2 Likes

I mean, I feel like we explained what the learn button was but ┐⁠(⁠´⁠ー⁠`⁠)⁠┌

Like Jake said, they’re already working on something. But what if next to the learn button (or in that general area) there was a wheel gauge of what you’re daily goal is, and how much you’ve done of it? Could be what they’re already planning. Either way, it seems like a solution for you is in the works already

3 Likes

If you read my posts again, you will see that I’ve never asked about what the learn button was for. I know what it does when I click on it. What I questioned was the purpose of having that number there on the button since it’s always your set batch size so it never changes. Is the number there because without it being there, you will not remember what you set as your batch size? It seems like a silly reason if that’s the only purpose, particularly if it confuses people since it’s not intuitive, which is why I suggested that it would’ve been more useful if that number was instead the number of grammar points left to study for the day.

2 Likes

Yeah hi again I’m just gonna take my leave of this convo with you :kissing_heart:

Last thing I’ll mention is that you can learn from multiple decks. So having that reminder of what the batch is set to for that deck is nice

1 Like

I get what you mean the design of the button is too analogous to the review button, it confuses their purpose.

2 Likes

Since everyone else is having their say…

Personally, I just set the batch size to 1 and if I want to do another grammar point, I do another. If I don’t do any new grammar points on a given day (and just do my reviews), then oh well. :woman_shrugging:t2:

5 Likes

Maybe they should change the colour to grey after you’ve reached your ‘goal’ or whatever so it looks like the empty review button but still with your batch number on it, so you can learn more but it doesnt look like a notification @Jake

3 Likes

For current interface design standards, when there is a clickable button/icon with a number in a bubble next to it, the number means there is a number of items needing your attention and if you take care of those items, the number will go down as you take care of each item until it clears up. We are conditioned to expect that behavior because every website and every app uses it, and you will be hard pressed to find a single website or a single app on your phone/desktop that doesn’t conform to this standard behavior, so when Bunpro does it differently than everyone else, it’s not surprising that it causes confusion.

5 Likes

It’s not just that BunPro does it differently, it’s that the behavior of the two buttons side by side is slightly different, while having the same visual design language. We are already conditioned to believe that the number of “Notifications” should go down as we do tasks, and this is how the review queue works as well. I think a slight change in design there, maybe something like “Learn - Do your next lessons” or something like that

I also think the language in the guides and settings could be cleaned up a little bit. Something like referring to it as a batch of lessons and batch size in settings, onboarding and documentation would be more clear for me. Then it doesn’t necessarily become about how many are you trying to complete in a day, but how many grammar points would you like to study before we quiz you on them and add them to your review queue.

I think looking at that design language, and actual language would help reduce these discussions on this particular topic, that in just my first week here seems to be a fairly common misunderstanding.

4 Likes

I love how Bunpro keeps evolving and releasing things, but I definitely wish there was more of a structure as it took me a while to figure out the machinations of how it worked. Great product though!

5 Likes