Mindspark HELP

Frequently Asked Mindspark Questions (Click on the question to view the response)

Q1. What is Mindspark?
Ans. Mindspark is a computer based adaptive self-learning programme. It is a learning system that allows the student to construct her own learning – at a pace she is comfortable with. It is an interactive system, where the student is not learning passively but learning interactively by answering questions of progressively increasing complexity levels.

Q2. How does Mindspark help clear student misconceptions?
Ans. Many students have misconceptions related to basic concepts that they carry forward from an early age. It is important to identify those and help the student overcome them. Most often, a student does not try to clear these misconceptions due to a lack of opportunity or fear of embarrassment. Mindspark questions are designed on the basis of detailed classroom studies and research in student learning - to specifically target common student errors and misconceptions.

Q3. Is it possible for a student to learn by only answering questions?
Ans. Mindspark is an adaptive learning program. This means that it will judge the current level of understanding in a particular topic and ask only those questions that will gradually help the student to understand the concept she/he was not clear about. Each question, at every step will be 'just beyond' the current level of understanding, and not too much beyond, as the student should be able to answer it correctly and learn in the process. This process – of learning through answering questions – has been found to be effective in other programmes too internationally.

Q4. Is it in line with the syllabus of the boards?
Ans. Yes, it is in line with the NCERT recommendations as well ICSE, CBSE and various state boards.

Q5. If a student wants to give a suggestion or points an error, how can you help?
Ans. Below each question there is a link “click to comment/report a problem” which the child can click on and enter comments or asks a question.

Q6. The student feels the questions he/she is getting are too easy (or too difficult). Why is that?
Ans. Mindspark is an adaptive learning programme. In Mindspark, at the start of a topic, the system gives some basic questions to see if the fundamentals are clear. But then, since it is an adaptive system, the difficulty level of questions gradually starts increasing, taking the students to more and more challenging questions. So the question difficulty level is at a pace that the students are comfortable with. Like this, every topic, subtopic and concept is covered thoroughly and comprehensively.
If a student finds Mindspark difficult, it might be asking difficult questions to estimate the understanding of the topic; it will eventually tune the questions appropriate to the individual’s learning level.

Q7. For which subjects is Mindspark available?
Ans. Mindspark is currently available only for Maths. However, we are planning to introduce Mindspark for Science and English in the near future.

Q8. For which classes is Mindspark appropriate?
Ans. Mindspark has been designed currently for classes 1 through 10.

Q9. Would using Mindspark help my child get more marks?
Ans. The focus on Mindspark is to help the child learn well, with understanding. We believe that when children learn the basics with understanding, this has a long term impact on how they perform on those topics as well as those built upon them. Thus we expect a strong correlation between performance in school tests and regular practicing on Mindspark. Studies have already indicated that students understand concepts better by using Mindspark; we will also be conducting studies to establish the improvement obtained in school marks.

Q10. What is the difference between Mindspark and ASSET?
Ans. ASSET is a skill-based diagnostic, benchmarking test that would help your child understand the strengths and weaknesses in each subject and then work on them to improve. A lot of research based on ASSET data has gone onto the development of Mindspark.

Mindspark is a computer-based online self-learning program, currently available in Maths. In Mindspark, a student can work on various topics in Maths through a series of questions arranged in a step-wise manner that helps him build a strong foundation and attempt to reach a level higher than her current one.

So while ASSET is a diagnostic assessment, Mindspark is an adaptive learning programme. While ASSET aims to check for your understanding with 40 carefully selected questions, Mindspark aims to help you learn new topics or revise old ones.

Q11. Does my child need to do Mindspark every day?
Ans. The recommended mode of use of Mindspark is 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week. The minimum recommended is 30 minutes per day 3 days a week. Mindspark provides a student regular practice and we believe that there can be no substitute for that. In some cases, where the student misses practice on some days, he can spend a little more time on the remaining days.

In a day user can login for multiple sessions of 30 minutes each. However after 30 minutes, system will automatically log him out and he can login again. The daily time limit is 90 minutes with no restriction on the number of logins/per day (sessions), but a single session cannot be longer than 30 minutes. If 90 mins/day has already been spent then system will not allow further Mindspark sessions. This provision is made mainly to allow students who have missed some sessions to catch up later. Remember that the recommended usage still remains 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week – it is desirable to space out sessions over an entire week, rather than do them intensively over one or two days followed by long gaps!

Q12. How does a student check previous reports?
Ans. When a student ends a session, she will see a summary report with the questions answered in that session.There will also be a link below this summary that says “See previous reports”. She can click on the word “reports” to get a list of reports from 30 previous sessions. She can then click on the numbers in the serial number column to view any particular report using the date against it.

Q13. How does a student change the topic?
Ans. If it has been allowed by the teacher, student can click the ‘ Change Topic ’ button, available on the question screen, and choose another topic. Please note that the student can only change to a topic “allowed” by the teacher.

Q14. If a student has problems with her password, what should she do?
Ans. While logging into Mindspark, if the student is getting the message “Username and password do not match” – then she may be making a mistake while typing the username and password. If she is copying the password then she could try typing instead. Probably, an extra space maybe getting copied as a result the student may be unable to login.

The student can use the “ Forgot Password? ” link under the Login details to be reminded of a forgotten password or reset her password.

Q15. How does a student change the e-mail id?
Ans. Important: Please note, that a change in the student e-mail would also change the username.

Q16. How does a student change the parent’s e-mail id?
Ans. The student will be able to change the parent’s e-mail id, to suit your preference, by following these steps –

Login to Mindspark

Go to My Details

Change (Parent’s e-mail, School, Address as needed)

Save and Finish

Navigate “ Back ” on the right corner of the page.

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Q17. What are challenge questions? When do they come? When do we see an answer?
Ans. Challenge questions are meant to give students exposure to tougher problems. A student gets two attempts to answer a challenge question. On the second attempt of a challenge question, a hint may be given. If answered wrongly the second time, the system will give correct answer.

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Q18. How does a student get sparkies?
Ans. A sparkie is given to a student when she answers three questions in a row correctly. For Challenge questions, 5 Sparkies are awarded if the student gets it right on the first attempt and 2 Sparkies if answered correctly on the second attempt. 10 Sparkies in a session will fetch a Super-Sparkie!

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Q19. How should a student avoid typing errors while giving answers?
Ans. Students can use these pointers while answering questions.

Q20. Why are some questions or question types repeated?
Ans. Sometimes some questions or question types are repeated so that some important concepts or ideas get strengthened. If a student answers a question wrongly, she will get a similar one to make sure that she has really understood the concept. Questions are repeated in special conditions when the system determines that extra practice is needed. The student should therefore attempt these questions patiently and answer them correctly.

Q21. Some questions have detailed explanation while other don’t - why?
Ans. Many of the Mindspark questions have detailed explanations that help understand how those types of problems are to be solved. Similar questions may have briefer explanations. In the case of challenge problems, two attempts of the problem are provided instead of explanations so that students can think about the possible solutions and improve their problem solving skills.

Q22. What happens after a student has finished all the topics assigned to her?
Ans. Once the student has finished all topics, she has the flexibility of visiting any topic she wishes to revise or practice it. Please note that data that is aggregated for the progress on every topic based on the student's last complete attempt.

Q23. What happens when there is a promotion of class in Mindspark?
Ans. Mindspark is an adaptive programme, and hence contrary to expectations, there will not be any drastic change visible when a student is promoted to the next class.

Specifically, the topic list being the same for students from class 1 to10, you will not see any change in the topic selection screen. The recommendations for each class need to be observed carefully in order to make a topic selection. Based on the topic selected, questions will automatically adjust themselves to the student's class level and ability.

When the class change takes place, if the student is currently in the middle of a topic, she will continue along that topic until she sees questions corresponding to her current class level. This logic holds for all the topics that she has completed partially (when the change is made). If she keeps answering questions correctly, the system will not inhibit her from moving to questions of higher classes and more difficulty.

If she is starting a new topic or repeating a topic (after the class change is made), she will be started at a level appropriate to her current class level.

Essentially, it is important to understand that using the adaptive learning logic the student is not restricted by what class she is in.

Q24. If the sums in Mindspark have not been taught in school, should my child still continue to do them or stop at that level?
Ans. Yes! Mindspark is designed as primarily a learning program. The child is free to continue if she is able to attempt these questions.

Q25. How do I know how my child is doing in Mindspark?
Ans. Every week Mindspark will mail out a detailed report to the parents and teachers. These reports will show how far the child has reached on each topic, the time taken by the child, the success rate and number of logins and so on. In addition, it will provide the teachers with data on rest of the class too.

Q26. The program ends a child's session on its own sometimes. Why is this?
Ans. Mindspark is designed to help the child learn but there is a limit after which the rate of learning decreases very quickly. To take care of these things, Mindspark will log the child out automatically after every 30 minutes of a session.

Q27. Is there an ideal browser for using Mindspark?
Ans. Mindspark has been designed primarily for Internet Explorer version 7.0. It will also work on Mozilla Firefox. We recommend that you use one of these two browsers to relish the Mindspark experience.

Q28. Why is a child unable to view visuals and animations on some of the questions?
Ans. This is probably because the Flash Player plug-in is not installed on the browser. This is an additional bit of software that is needed to view the animations and some of the visuals. You can download the Flash player from this link http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Q29. Why do some of the questions take time to appear?
Ans. Apart from reasons related to internet speed, there may be times when Mindspark is trying to figure out the next best question to ask. This may involve looking at many past questions the student has answered and then determine the gaps in understanding that need to be addressed. Sometimes, questions with animations may take a little more time to appear.

Q30. What does one do when the image does not load or page blanks out as soon as the submit button is clicked?
Ans. Students may face this problem due to a slow internet connection. This is usually a temporary loading problem. We recommend that when a question is taking time to load, students should not hit the refresh button as that would take them to the reports page. They should wait till they are sure the image has not loaded (an empty box with a small red- cross mark will be seen, in this case) and only then they should press the key.

If this also does not work, we recommend that they should log in and try again to see if this ever happens another time.

If the problems persist, we would request the students to clear the browser cache and try again.

For Internet Explorer 7