Find out what Mumsnet testers thought of Eedi Family online maths lessons

[LucyBMumsnet]

This is the feedback thread for the Mumsnet users who tested Eedi Family online maths lessons with their child in years 6, 7 or 8*. Eedi Family is an online Maths learning platform that provides interactive maths lessons for children to build confidence in maths.

Here’s what Eedi has to say: “We believe that every child has the potential to thrive in maths given the right support. Using our experience of working with 15k+ schools, we want to help every child to build the skills and confidence to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Our new product, Eedi Family helps children safely practise maths at home and build confidence. With the power of data and a team of expert teachers, we’ve created conversational online lessons with a virtual learning companion that adapt to your child’s needs and align with the national curriculum.

Join us in trying an affordable alternative to private tuition that helps your child to try their best and want to keep learning.”

Selected testers received a one month free trial of Eedi Family and were asked to complete at least one virtual lesson and quiz per week.

Testers, please give your feedback by answering the following questions as well as sharing any other thoughts you have and completing the short survey we’ve emailed you.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?
3. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?
4. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?
5. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

All testers who give the required feedback will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £100 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Insight T&Cs apply

*England and Wales - Year 6, 7 or 8
Scotland - P7, S1, or S2
Northern Ireland - Year 7, 8 or 9

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

DD liked the fact that when you got something wrong it explained how to get it right via a specific lesson.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The messenger format.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

We sat together but DD was in charge. It didn’t need much explaining but I did try and make it sound fun before we started as DD doesn’t like maths in general and I thought the informal layout would be attractive to her.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

A novel way of learning that may appeal to kids who don’t do too well in formal lessons.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Ask the child to confirm their answer before revealing it. Asking a child if they got an answer right after telling them what it is, is not a good idea and leaves it open for them to lie so that the parent thinks they’re doing better than they are. We also had one lesson where the you had to pick out the correct method and answer a question. Then the only answer confirmed by Eedi was which method was correct and not the actual answer to the question. Frustrating for a child who’s just worked something out not to have the actual answer confirmed to them.I also think that for £7.99pm there should be almost unlimited quizzes and lessons and that it shouldn’t be restricted to one a week. Overall I found it a good idea but not worth the subscription and there’s a few issues to iron out.

Thank you for the opportunity to test Eedi.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

It was a free trial

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I can't think of anything

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

Extra maths to help learn things he's unsure of. Fairly involved but it became complicated and we got confused with logins required for both of us. Then when my son had completed a lesson, or so he thought, he couldn't move onto the next one. Perhaps it was us, but it was all rather complicated.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? Online maths lessons
2. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

The problems were that the first lesson was far beyond what my son has learnt and he was totally put off when the questions were so difficult. It was impossible to get him to continue. The lessons were also too long and I didn't like the feature that asked how confident you are with your answer. Really we want to know if his answer is correct. The teaching side of the topic should occur first, then the lesson to ensure the student can answer the questions. The emails that I received weren't personalised and also so long that I didn't get round to reading them.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

My son was able to navigate it on his own, it didn't help him learn, although he was perfectly happy to spend a long time typing his explanations for the wrong answers

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

he was confident to use it

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I sat with him and could see he was happy and understood the site, he uses very similar things for his school homework

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

no better than homework, won't help if they are struggling

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

I don't know, sorry.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Having a supplementary online revision option.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The chat concept, although the ‘automated’ chat had serious limitations and the live chat was not available late enough into the evening.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I just said we were going to try out a maths online site to help work on her maths skills. We logged in and went through the first session together, as it wasn’t that intuitive with the dual log in. She completed the test and the lesson, but it then took her back to the test as if she hadn’t taken it! Not the best start. It wasn’t clear if we had missed something or if it was a glitch.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? Extra maths practice, but better options are available.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home?

Teach the lesson first then ask the questions. It will give the student more confidence to answer the questions. Start with easier questions, then get more difficult. Get rid of the ‘how confident bare you with your answer’- it has the opposite effect and is a waste of time. When a child has to go through a lengthy lesson when they get answers wrong, it seems like there is a ‘penalty’ for getting it wrong. This really put my daughter off the whole thing, when she just needed to see a quick, clear worked answer. There was no real incentive to get things right either- asking a child if they got an answer right is not the way to go. The automated chat was also extremely limited and regardless of what you typed you got the same answer! We tended to do the session in the evening after school homework, but got a message that live chat was not available. Only unlocking a topic a week was frustrating. We wanted to pick a topic to supplement what she was doing in school. I would expect much more content to commit to a monthly payment. Finally, the look and feel is quite bland for children. Maths should be fun! The progress bar and the ‘celebration’ graphics are very basic. Other web sites she uses through school seem much more dynamic and interactive, including real time solo and class challenges, different levels, rewards etc. We were excited to be part of the trial, so thank you, but we were both somewhat underwhelmed.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?
The interactive style of leasons
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?
I liked that I got an email when DS had completed a lesson and that it told me what areas he had struggled with.
3. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?
Told him that we were testing it and helped him to get logged in and started
4. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?
An online maths resource
5. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

I very much agree with other testers who said it felt back to front to have the test first and then the lesson. We were also confused as we didn't realise that there was a lesson for each question in the topic. The interface was a little confusing and we both struggled to see what had been completed and what was left to do. I also didn't like that only one topic is available per week. If I was paying for a service like this, I'd want all the content to be available so that DS could crack on when he gets some free time.
DS is 13 (year 8) and found the chat feature a bit frustrating and twee but I can see how it might appeal to younger children. He also found some of the content quite repetitive and got frustrated and annoyed with it.

DS uses Hegarty Maths for school and much prefers it, and to be honest, so do I! He can pick a topic to work through and finds the video helpful.
I had kind of hoped that Eedi would be more of an online tutoring platform but it doesn't offer anything more than Hegarty, so I wouldn't be prepared to pay for it.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I like the concept

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Nothing really

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I stayed with them and asked them to do me a favour, just to try it out.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Way too difficult, good for extending a child who was interested in maths and wanted extra work.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Maybe find their baseline before starting to set a topic

1.What did you like most about Eedi Family?
The concept is good

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Nothing

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

Explained to him it’s similar to another online system we have used in the past

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

It’s a online maths program for kids

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Make it more learning first then questions after. Not really keen on it

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Its online, your child can take part anytime they want. Although my child felt like a failure when she got the answers wrong.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I couldn't see any good features.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I helped set my daughter up and did the first lesson with her. It wasn't straight forward. Lots of questions I couldn't answer. I told her it would help her understand her maths work but instead it confused her even more as she had to be tested first before she could work out what she did wrong.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? Online Maths

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Have mini lessons first with examples than do a test or a quiz on each topic. Aldo start with lower level and gradually building with the levels. Make it less complicated so they understand the basics building it up gradually.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I like most about Eedi family is its uniqueness and also its ability to make teaching kind of more fun and exciting rather then just other websites just stating the questions.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

For me the best feature about Eedi family is that after you answer a question it doesn't just tell you the answer immediately it actually asks you why you think that which is really important for a childs understanding reason development.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I told my child that Eedi family is your basically chatting to someone like in a chat room to encourage him because he is always on social media this actually really helped because he became more and more attached and even ended up believing a person was writing it live!

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

If I was to describe Eedi family to a friend then I would say that it is just a very unique website which can provide a childs personal skills along with a little bit of the childs social development.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

My suggestion would be maybe saving if the child was right or wrong till the end and if they got it wrong then the next question could not be the same like now, but be different but based on the same thing.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Unfortunately not much at all

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

There really wasn't one

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

My son loves Maths and is very good with computers, so after setting it up he asked to do it on his own.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Maths lessons, very structured, lots of tests

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Less tests, my son loves Maths tests particularly but found this a bit intense. The lessons were also too long and too slow for my son. Good as a replacement for school lessons, such as in lockdown but not so great as an extra bit of knowledge and felt too much like homework, according to my son.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

It was fairly easy to set-up and get started with answering questions.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Explains all the questions and the live chat function.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

He loves Maths so was happy to try out any Maths program. He was fine by himself.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Online Maths platform for kids in KS3.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

The kids should be able to choose topics and the level that they want to work on. Needs to be cheaper as well.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Ease of use, fun and modern approach to learning.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I'd say the way it's designed. Super clever and inspiring.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I let them read the description of Eedi Family and guided them through the login process. Then I let them explore, complete their first session while reaching out to me with any arising questions.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Fun, modern, innovative way to help your child get better at maths-while fully enjoying it.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Possibly offer posting printed materials for an extra fee to have some written reference,too.

1.What did you like most about Eedi Family?
Nothing much, I’m sorry.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The chat function for support.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I said we should try this nee website for baths lessons as he loves maths.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Online maths lessons.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home?

It all seemed back to front. The way of doing many problems were very different to what they do in schools. So my son didn’t get half of it even though he’s done that bit in school months ago.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I liked that it was online as a back up to our maths learning

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I liked the small lessons you could watch

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

We went through it together, I stayed with my daughter as she finds maths hard

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

We found the questions abit as my daughter struggles with maths but the on the whole I think its a good site.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

The questions could be abit clearer

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I liked the idea of it but unfortunately the execution of it did not suit my daughter.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The interaction & explanation of the maths question.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I explained it as extra maths tuition to help her in her school maths lessons. I sat with her and watched her do it.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Extra maths tuition

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Unfortunately Eedi was not for us. It was too heavy going & intensive when my daughter was already doing maths lessons & homework from school. It felt too test based and was not fun or engaging. My daughter just did not enjoy it and we found Smartick was a better fit for us. If you are looking for extra maths tuition for your child & don’t want to pay out for a tutor this might be a good alternative. Thank you for letting us try it out.

1. what did you like most, I really liked how fast I got responses from email and any questions I had were quickly answered so very good technical support.
2. what was the best feature, The private lesson with tutor
3. how did you explain it to your child, My little girl is 12 so was very understanding of trialing a maths program and wanted to have a go at something that could help her improve.
4. how would you describe eedi? Extra math tuition
5. what could eedi do better to help, My daughter started to get really disheartened when she had to fail to learn anything and started to lose interest by the end of the trial, I think if there were lessons first to help build confidence and explain what they are learning that would help and also the introduction of maths games or the like as rewards for completing lessons/tests would help keep them engaged and wanting to interact more.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family? How it was tailored to my child
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family? In all honesty we didn’t love it. It’s quite dull and not very engaging
3. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session? That we had something exciting to try
4. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? I probably wouldn’t bring it up as it wouldn’t be a positive review
5. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning? More interactive and engaging

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Easy layout of the website and very straight forward to use. DD liked the concept.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

DD enjoyed the quizzes and ability to talk through the answers online.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I explained that we would be working through some maths lessons on line. Most of DD’s friends (y6) have been having extra tuition this year anyway so DD was quite excited by this prospect. She was ill during the trial period so we didn’t explore as much as we would have liked.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

As a great back up to school lessons and an ability to work through things in the curriculum that their DC may find difficult.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

As I explained we weren’t able to access as much as we would have liked due to illness but from what we did get to test it seems like a great support tool as a parent without spending a small fortune on private tuition.
Thanks Mumsnet for being given the opportunity to test this product & Merry Christmas 🎄

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I’m afraid we didn’t really like it at all. My daughter thought the chat style was cool.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I don’t really think it has one, sorry.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I told her it was to help her practice maths / she’s competent but lacks confidence and we’re running up to SATS.

I sat with her during the first session so that I could see what it was like.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Online maths tutor.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Let parents choose the subject - there are areas my daughter finds easy, and others she struggles with and needs more practice. Making her relearn the “easy” stuff makes it boring. To be any use to me, it needs to reinforce what has been done that week at school.

Asking “why” when they answer a question just doesn’t work for my 11 year old - she doesn’t always have the maths language to explain it, but she knows what the answer is. It makes her doubt whether she’s got it right.

The lesson on negative numbers was just baffling for both of us - we both understand it, but the counters used in the explanation were not anything we have come across before, and it wasn’t explained at all. It seemed a complex method to work out what seemed (to us) easy concepts.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

The fact that if there was anything that wasn't understood - private tuition was available

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The private response (see above)

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

Math's Help

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Math's Help

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

I think it was a really good site with great lessons and a good concept - but unfortunately, for some reason (possibly on the verge of teenagedom!) my daughter wasn't particularly engaged, and only used it very sparingly - although I know she was bogged down with school projects too!

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family? I’m not sure I liked it that much, would of been better to start easy and consolidate learning than be tough from the get go and my child is quite good at maths. I thought it was explained in a boring way.
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family? Chat function helpful and I liked the gifs etc
3. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session? I told them it was a test for if we had to go back to online learning. She needed a lot of help to get started.
4. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? Extra maths support
5. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

It needs to be more fun. My children were younger but learning their times tables by dancing (you tube reggae times tables) Was much better to engage them

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

It was a commitment free trial didn’t need to pay or register card details.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Try before you commit and online with instant support responses.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I said it would help her to enjoy maths again as she had lost her desire to try since lockdown, new school year, teacher and all the pressure of 11+

I left her to it after showing her where to find test. Lessons and login.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Online tutoring with interactive support

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

It was too boring and not stimulating enough no stimulation or incentive to keep trying.

I found properly testing the site difficult as it was being updated and improved during the test period. I also don't think we made full use of all the functionalities - testing it in the run-up to xmas wasn't the best time to get my son to do extra maths!

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I liked that the child was asked questions first, with the choice of watching a lesson if they didn't understand. This would work well if using it to support school learning but less well for home-schooling.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The familiar simple 'chat' format appealed to my son. He is getting to the age where cute avatars and animations no longer appeal!

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I told him we'd been chosen to test a new maths learning website (but had to tell him we had the chance to win £100 vouchers to motivate him to try it!). For the first lesson we sat together whist he had a go and we talked about what we did/didn't like about it.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

A new maths learning website in a chat format which might appeal to older kids.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

Although the 'chat' format appealed to my son, he found the speed of it frustrating. Waiting for the 'bot' to respond was irritating - especially all the pointless phrases such as "Here's a good question for you!" and "This question is a fun one!". After a while he said he'd rather just have a proper worksheet where he could see all the questions and see what he had to do. Not knowing what was coming and when it was going to end de-motivated him.

My son liked it when the questions started easy and got harder at the end - (sometimes v. hard!) but it was not always clear what you had to do to solve them, which again we found a bit frustrating and put my son off even attempting to work it out.

I couldn't persuade my son to watch any of the lessons after the first one we did. We both found the explanation very confusing. He is confident with maths so he understood the concept (addition and subtraction with negative integers) despite not having covered it in school and could answer (most of) the questions. The zero pairs and counters explanation was very long-winded and totally demotivated him from watching any more of the videos. The explanations were very 'dry' and not in keeping with the 'coolness' of the chat format.

We found the navigation and naming of things quite hard to fathom - but this was changed during the testing period so that added to the confusion.

Overall, I think the concept is a good one and could work well with a bit more tweaking but it will never appeal to all children! I personally wouldn't pay a subscription for an online maths tutor at the moment.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

We liked the feature of being able to chat to live teacher and an estimate response time. We liked how quiz can pick up your weak areas and gives you lessons to work on them.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Live teacher chat.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

My child is used to using online resources for studying due to us doing so much homeschooling this year. So I didn't need to explain it to him apart from saying that's it's slightly different from our usual resource as it's quiz based.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Maths lessons online where you are given (a random) quiz and provided with lessons based on your results.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

We need to be able to choose a topic we want to work on. Random quiz wasn't really what we were after. Lessons can be quite short as well and we wanted more follow up tasks to make sure that new skill is understood. Chat robot was annoying at times. There were a few glitches. My son was annoyed that he has to provide written answers to every question. We either didn't know how to use the website properly or it's actually missing quite a lot of features.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

The idea of building confidence. The whole premise sounded good, with some interactive support.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The fact that it was going to mirror the topics taught at school.

1. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session?

I tried to stress the confidence factor and we did the first lesson together.

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend?

Another online maths tutoring programme, but not the best one to use.

1. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning?

The major problem for us was that it just wasn't very good at what it was trying to do. I thought the explanations given just didnt' make sense and were hard to understand for my daughter so she gave up immediately and wouldn't try it any more. Whatever strategies the programme is using, it just didn't work for us.