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?

It was very easy to use

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

It being user friendly

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

I explained that it was a fun maths game, and I sat with her and watched.

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

Extra support for Maths at home

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 aimed at a much lower level than my child is at, I would love to see it stretch her more.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Easy for my son to navigate and use independently.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The way that parents and children could both interact with it, on different levels.

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

I explained that it would be a great way of extending skills developed in school. This was the hook that sold it to my son. In fact, it didn’t work out in this way, which was a major disappointment.

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

On line maths practice in a child focussed style.

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

Not sure that the level of learning was ideally targeted to individuals. Wish you could easily pick and choose topics, building on what is being taught in schools.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

In theory it's a great idea, however we struggled to use it as it's better on a laptop and ours died.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I liked the different challenges

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

I just said there's a new maths thing here for you to try, my son was quite interested to begin with

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

An extra helping hand with 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?

Offer a choice of topics so we could pick the topic that my son is either doing at school or is struggling with.

As I wrote earlier my laptop died so I havnt been able to fully test the program.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Very easy to use for both me and my son

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family? I don't have to be with him abd he can do it independently
2. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session? I explained it and sat with him in his first session
3. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? Interactive maths lesson, great value for money
4. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning? I can't think of anything really as found it great, my son really enjoyed doing these lessons, he is naturally good at Maths abd they were challenging enough for him to keep him interested. He really liked the interactive aspect.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

First of all, thank you so much for choosing us! we enjoyed Eedi Family trial. My son loved quizzes and layout of the website was easy and understandable, detailed videos were helpful too.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

My son liked new achievement which was added closer to the end of the trial, he told that achievement thing helps to encourage and do more. He also liked that we can choose the same curriculum his school was working at but unfortunately, with a virus, all curriculum went weird and there were things which he didn't know and deepened his knowledge in Math. I read other people reviews about kids losing confidence and failing quiz questions and one of the quizzes which were about the theme which my son was supposed to learn at school but as they were on remote learning they mostly did revision and he started to get upset as he is getting so many wrong answers. I explained that it is so useful to see your own weak points and fill the gaps of knowledge and learn things which you were sure you know but turns out you don't know so well. As Eedi is all about learning something new and deepening math skills which you got already not trying to get all answers right straight away. I also liked emails which said how child answered quizzes and is there any issue and after videos did he resolve this issue or not.

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

I told that Edi is a Math programme, to check what you know and find gaps in your learning, I helped to log in and stayed a while to see how he is doing and what to expect from this programme, it was easy and simple to use and my son liked it a lot.

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

Math programme for children to fill gaps and learn something useful, easy to use from the comfort of your own home and affordable.

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

eedi could make shorter video options, my son complained that he already understand his issue but the video was too long, that's why shorter and longer educational video versions would be great. He also liked chat feature as it as like texting to someone, quite unusual and cool, there was glitch once but nothing major. He also would like to see more achievement badges and maybe possibility to earn some point to change or create avator, the colour of his page etc, gamer there who love to add entertainment features to everything. Shorter lessons and quizzes would be the better choice he would prefer 2 shorter sessions a week than one long as at the end it is so hard to focus and get boring, he is quite impatient. Otherwise, this is a great way how to deepen Math skills and add confidence. Children who are afraid of getting quiz wrong should remember that "Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before "

What did you like most about Eedi Family?
I really didn’t like it

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

None

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

Had to be quite involved as my daughter found it quite frustrating to use

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

Additional 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?

More lesson based rather than test based

1. I liked the video explanations that were clear and comprehensive but overall I have to say I didn't like the general style.

1. I like the diagnostic questions as they show common misconceptions but certainly in the context of an individual online lesson I'm not sure about them. Maybe they would work better at the end of a lesson?

1. I explained it as an online math's tutor and sat with my daughter while she did the lessons to help her. We never used the actual private tutor feature as I think we were logged in at the wrong time for it?

1. I would describe it as an online math's program but I have to say that unfortunately I wouldn't recommend it.

1. The lessons for my child and me were too long and it wasn't clear how far through a lesson/topic you were, which resulted in both of us ending a lesson as dinner was ready etc etc and we weren't sure how much longer we had to go. Also getting a child to explain in writing why they thought an answer is such and such is incredibly difficult!

Thanks for giving us the chance to take a look at it and best of luck!

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Sorry, couldn't really bring myself to like it. Being a home educated family, we've tried lots of these.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I guess the ability to receive a private response.

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

Here is new maths programme to try like XXX ones we have tried before. I sat with him the whole time.

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

As a curriculum based maths tool.

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's tricky because any 'wrong' answers are naturally seen as a kick to the ego, even if they are partly correct. In our experience, this kind of 'test' does not really build confidence unless the child is getting 100%

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I liked that it was easy to use & navigate. I also loved the private tutor option.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The private tutor option.

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

My child has previously used Eedi with school so whilst i helped log on, he pretty much got on with it by himself.

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

Excellent Value for money, cheaper and less time consuming than buying traditional paper books to back up learning.

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 agree with PP who said don't test first as it can demotivate and undermine the child's confidence in their abilities rather than building their confidence up which i think is a key thing in the learning process - Thank You.

I tested this with my daughter who is in Year 7, she struggled a bit with maths a few years ago but improved a lot after using another online programme which she outgrew as it felt a bit childish to her. I was looking forward to finding out if she liked something more aimed at her age group.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

My daughter enjoyed the sessions (when they worked which was not often unfortunately) and really liked the gifs and pictures. She liked the positive feedback and the emojis and found the lessons and worksheets ok.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

When it worked, the worksheets.

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

I explained that it was a new online maths learning page to try. I tried to do the parent example session first which stopped working after a few minutes, with the page frozen and no new responses appearing whatever I tried. Reloading took me back to the start. My daughter tried her first session with me with her to see how it went. Again it only worked for a while before the responses stopped and she had to start again from the beginning several times.

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

An online maths platform which only works for certain browsers.

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 needs to work on all browsers. My daughter tried several times to complete sessions but they never fully worked. I tried to using the chat feedback and one weekend got a 'back on Monday' type message. Maybe it's better if you use it in the week but we only had time at weekends. The following weekend she tried another session and this time we got blanks and no responses instead of questions. The person who responded on chat did try their best to help and confirmed that the questions were not displaying correctly for the browser we were using and said they would get it fixed and posted the question images we couldn't see. On that occasion the response was appreciated but the fact that in all the times we tried it never just worked was very off-putting and means I wouldn't be able to recommend it. A real shame as I think the content would have been useful for my child had there not been so many technological problems with the site itself.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

We did not like it. If I had to pick a most I would say it’s clean design.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

It’s ease of login.

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

I wanted to use this with my DD who is very good at maths but has outgrown many of the younger offerings. She tried it but became so frustrated with having to answer 20 questions on subjects she knew then not progress. She did not want to engage after her first session. I then offered my son who loves a maths challenge. He did not enjoy it either. The slow pace and inability to choose what he could learn frustrated him also.

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

A good attempt at an AI programmed that I’m sure in a few months time will be greatly
Improved.

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

Allow my child to work on many maths subjects at once. Connections within the brain are made through hyper connections not linear learning. Give them quick activities daily or short sessions rather than long boring repetitive activities. I even became annoyed at the way in which you did not know where you were in the activity. DD hated not knowing how long it would go on for.

Overall I think it had great potential but needs a bit more refining. Also, don’t limit the number of activities set. We use IXL and DS loves earning rewards on that. Some days he will play for 15 minutes and others for hours!

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family? I liked it as it seemed user friendly compared to my (ancient) idea of usual maths lessons etc. but my child found it quite glitchy & didn't like the chat feature at all.
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Fast response to any help needed.

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

I asked if they wanted to try out a new online maths platform & let them get on with it!

1. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? It's a customisable maths app to support home learning.
2. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning? I thought they had this covered but any success really depends if your child responds positively to the Eedi Family style!

We didn’t get on well with it at all. Ds (aged 12) adores maths and was keen to try it but we struggled to log in on several occasions when we tried, and then, I’m afraid, with Christmas we forgot all about it (until getting the feedback reminder today). We didn’t did the online chat very helpful because it wasn’t available in the evenings when we wanted to try it to get help to use the website.

That’s supposed to say we didn’t find the online chat very helpful.

We didn't like it, I'm sorry to say. I wanted to, as I'm looking for a maths site to support my son's learning.

(We used a mixture of mathletics and Maths Factor during the first lockdown and although DS found mathletics probably more fun, I thought Maths Factor was great and he learned a lot.)

Eedi was complicated to access, long-winded, unengaging for my son. He hated being asked why he thought the answer he'd got was right. In fact, he was so unengaged, after the first (lengthy) session, he was very against going on it again and I found it hard to push it.

Anyhow, these are the q's which I'll try to answer:

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family? Not much
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family? Clear explanations but unengaging
3. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session? said it was online maths like maths factor and we needed to test it for mumsnet. I sat beside him for his session.
4. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? online maths tutoring
5. What could Eedi do better to help your child build confidence in maths and to support you as a parent in home learning? be less long-winded, more engaging. I wonder whether, as my son is a young p7 and therefore at the bottom of the age range, it is more suited to older children? I found Maths Factor worked very well in many ways with only small tweaks needed for improvement so found that Eedi didn't come anywhere near that

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I didn’t like it. I wanted to be able to choose what my child worked on because he needed practice in very specific areas but I couldn’t seem to be able to do that and it wanted him to follow a set pattern of lessons. We didn’t bother in the end.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I’m not sure I can say what the best feature is because it wasn’t suitable for our needs.

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

We just said it was there to support him with any areas of maths that he was struggling with but then when we found we couldn’t tailor it to his needs we gave up.

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

I’m not sure because I wouldn’t recommend 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?

There needs to be some sort of general assessment which determines where your child is and then pitches the help accordingly. If it was more specific in the way I have described I’m sure we would use it but my child didn’t want to go over place value for example when he is quite secure in that already. If it could provide just the right level of support and challenge in very targeted areas it would be just great.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I liked most about Eedi that they offered in depth lessons for the quiz questions. I sat with my son for some of them and found the explanations helpful.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

I liked that I received email updates when my child had completed a quiz/lesson and what their score was.
This meant I could leave my child complete the work wothout me sitting next to him.

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

I explained Eedi as a supplement to the maths he was doing at school. For his first session I sat with him and we worked through it together.

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

I would describe it as Extra maths help if your child needs a boost.

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 maybe beginning with some easy questions just to get the child used to how the website works.

We were very happy with the program overall.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

My daughter liked the quizzes the best.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The quizzes.

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

I told my daughter we were going to try an online maths learning programme that would help her continue to make progress. I sat with her and did the first session.

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

An online maths learning programme which has some unusual methods.

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 didn't like the silent teaching. My daughter also got really frustrated with the negative numbers method as it was different to what she'd learnt and that lesson took me a fair while to get and then I had to explain it to her. Not what you want from an online programme to have to take over and intervene with a year 8 pupil.

We didn't like the voice of the female teacher on the lessons.

We weren't offered an actual private lesson and my daughter ended up being set the same lesson she'd already done.
All in all it was a pretty frustrating experience.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family? I liked the idea of something that children could work through on their own and still feel supported in their learning.
2. What was the best feature of Eedi Family? I had to get in touch with Eedi about my account and their customer service was great - they were very helpful and prompt in their response.
3. How did you explain Eedi Family to your child and how involved were you during their first session? I explained that it was a new way to support maths learning and he just had to give his opinion on how he found it. I was very involved in the first session as we talked a lot about what was happening on screen and how difficult/helpful etc. it was.
4. How would you describe Eedi Family to a friend? Limited online 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? We didn’t find it particularly easy to navigate the sessions - it seemed that there was one lesson a week but there was no choice as to which topics were covered. My son became quite frustrated as he got one question wrong because he did not know one of the terms used in the question. The teaching session was very slow and worked on the assumption that he did not understand the mathematical processes (which he did). If there had of been an option to click on a term to get a definition, he would have learnt the definition and moved through the work feeling more positive. He didn’t like the chatbot either - he thought the emojis and gifs were too childish and quickly worked out that he was getting stock phrases regardless of what he wrote. Overall, it was disappointing - not enough content, not pacey enough, not personalised to the child’s ability. Sorry - we really wanted to love this!

We tried to test this product but unfortunately my son would not engage with it. I do not believe this is a problem with Eedi itself, more that my son is facing personal difficulties at the moment.
For this reason I cannot give an accurate review.

What did you like most about Eedi Family?

My daughter seemed to like it and engage with it, which is not usual for maths!

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

That it asked how confident she was with her answers.

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

Just that it was to help with Maths - she was upset at a tough test at school so more receptive than normal. I wasn't very involved because she hates me helping!!

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

Just as an online maths programme.

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'm not sure really, as we've only done it for a couple of weeks it's quite early to say. Dd seemed to enjoy it and engage with it,which is unusual for her. I don't know what the long term impact on her maths ability would be yet.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

Ease of use

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Chat function

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

Maths tuition with a chat if she doesn’t understand something. I wasn’t much involved, it was easy for my daughter to understand and she just wanted to do it by herself.

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

Handy maths tuition for years 6-8.

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 know it’s a bot and they are a bit cheeky, don’t bother to take it too seriously and answer honestly, something should be done about that/it should be improved somehow.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I loved the idea of a tutoring app that could be used whenever was most convenient, with on-line support available when further explanations or one to one support was needed.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

Clear explanations. However, these were too long to maintain my child’s interest.

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

As I’d already discussed getting a tutor with him, I said we’d try this option first. It would be more convenient than having to attend a tutoring session, especially at the moment when we’re trying to limit contact with others. I said it was just an app to provide extra help with maths and explain any areas he was finding difficult in class. His maths skills are already way above mine so I’m not much use when I try to help with his homework! We did the first trial session together.

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

I loved the idea behind this but unfortunately I couldn’t recommend it to a friend yet. We were disappointed that it couldn’t be used on a mobile phone (it took a long time to establish this problem). The first session was frustrating as we seemed to be going round in circles with the same quiz. The system is quite slow, and needs improvements to be on par with other learning apps. I’d prefer it to be more flexible so you can focus on specific topics as they are being covered in school.

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 understand the thinking behind having the child to explain the reason for the answer but it did make it a slow, boring process. Shorter sessions would be better.

Thank you very much for the trial, I’d like to try it again when it’s been refined as it could be such a useful tool and much cheaper than a weekly tutor.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

It was fairly straightforward to use and DD was able to navigate it on her own.

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

That it is an alternative to a maths tutor.

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

I told her it was some extra maths practice and we did the first session together, so I could see that she knew how to use it.

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

An online maths tool with interactive tutorials.

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 both felt it would be better if there were lessons prior to completing the questions. DD got a bit demoralised after getting lots wrong on a subject she has not covered before. This also meant the length of the session would be really long, when she had to go to the lessons to see where she had gone wrong. There needs to be a choice of topics for it to be useful to supplement school work. It would make more sense to be able to choose the topic that fits in with her current school work. The format was fairly uninspiring and the silent lesson was a bit strange as DD was not used to this type of lesson. She found the chat ok but sometimes the answers didn’t make sense.

1. What did you like most about Eedi Family?

I like the way it is structured with set progression

1. What was the best feature of Eedi Family?

The quizzes are good with the multiple choice aspect

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

I sat with DS, and let him explore the site a bit. Then talked him through the interactive chat type bit as he’s autistic and didn’t understand it

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

That it’s like talking to a real tutor as it talks you through the questions in a friendly way

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’s a great service so I’m not sure really. Unfortunately my DS didn’t get on with it, he found the fact it is like a conversation with a stranger quite uncomfortable but I think for other kids it is great, if he liked it I’d keep using it