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For learners

Your activity, and why a figure is withheld

rì jī yuè lěi — “Day by day, month by month, it accumulates”

The activity room, the six findings the Lab will raise, the five optional cognitive tasks — and why one chart works while the next says "not enough yet".

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October 9, 2026

The Learning Lab reports what your practice shows and refuses to report what it does not. This is the part most people never read: where your own activity lives, what the five optional tasks measure, and why a chart sometimes says "not enough yet" instead of showing you a number.

Without a plan: The activity room and the evidence rules

How many FACETS you see follows your plan; the thresholds and the flags do not.

The activity room

Your own record, in order: what you practised, when, for how long, and what came out of it. Not a score — a ledger.

It is the room to open when a figure elsewhere in the Lab surprises you, because almost every surprising number turns out to be a coverage fact rather than an ability fact. A flat side on your profile usually means you have never been set that kind of work, and the activity list is where you can see that directly instead of inferring it.

Why it says "not enough yet"

Every figure in the Lab has a minimum amount of evidence behind it, and below that minimum it is withheld with the reason shown rather than estimated. A blank chart is indistinguishable from a broken one, so it never just goes blank.

The thresholds are different for each measure, which is the part worth understanding. A simple proportion settles down after a handful of attempts. A trend over time needs far more, because a slope fitted to five points is mostly noise. A confidence measure needs enough attempts in both the confident and the unsure band before it can say anything at all. One threshold for everything would be either uselessly cautious or quietly wrong.

Group figures need five people

Separate from the evidence rule, and for a different reason. A median over two or three learners is not a group statistic — it is one person’s number wearing a group’s label, and the smaller the group the more exactly it identifies them.

So below five learners, group figures wait. Individual rows and counts do not: a tutor can always open a learner they teach, which is the job. What the floor stops is a number presented as the cohort’s while being readable as an individual’s — the form that travels upward to an administrator who was never meant to see the individual.

The six things it will flag

Where there is enough evidence, the Lab raises specific, named findings rather than a general score. There are six kinds, and each one names a different problem with a different fix.

What a flag means
FlagWhat it meansWhat to do
StalledPractice is happening and nothing is moving.Usually the material is too easy or too hard. Change the level rather than the amount.
Illusion of masteryConfident and wrong — answers given quickly and incorrectly.The most valuable flag here. Slow down and check, because confidence is blocking review.
Review overdueItems are due and not being done.The schedule has got ahead of you. Clear the backlog before adding new material.
Production gapRecognition is far ahead of production.You can read it and cannot say or write it. Set writing and speaking work specifically.
Sudden dropA sharp fall against your own earlier window.Often circumstantial rather than ability. Worth a look rather than an intervention.
Error clusterThe same kind of mistake recurring.The cheapest thing on this list to fix, because one explanation clears all of it.
Three of the six are treated as higher priority — illusion of mastery, review overdue and a sudden drop — because each is a case where carrying on as normal makes it worse.

The five cognitive tasks

Five short exercises, a minute or two each, entirely optional and entirely separate from your learning: working memory, response inhibition, processing speed, sustained attention, and implicit sequence learning.

They are research. They are never inserted into a lesson, they do not change your schedule, your XP or your streak, and not doing them costs you nothing anywhere in the product.

They also need their own consent, which is asked for separately from everything else and can be withdrawn at any time. Where the learner is a guardian-managed child, that consent is the guardian’s to give rather than the child’s.

What the Lab is not

  • Not a test — It reads the record your ordinary practice already produces. There is nothing extra to sit.
  • Not a grade — It never changes your schedule, your XP or your streak.
  • Not a ranking — No leaderboard and no position in a class. Comparisons are you against your own earlier window.
  • Not reading what you wrote — It is built from outcomes — right, wrong, how long, how confident. No endpoint behind it returns free text to anybody.

Common questions

It is built from evidence and has not got enough yet. Each measure counts separately, so the fastest route to a full picture is variety across a fortnight rather than volume in one activity.

Continue learning

The Learning LabSeven facets of knowing a word, and why one number cannot describe your Chinese.Research consent, the third tierLearning, analytics and research are three separate agreements. The third is guardian-granted for a managed child — and probe results reach no teacher, school or parent at any granularity.What we measure, and what we do notPlainly: the data behind your progress, the three consent tiers, and the things we will never do.Who can see a learner’s dataA teaching role, a lab-capable circle and an active enrolment — all three. Plus what a teaching view never contains, including a rank that is not computed at all.