The EdTech Roundup
Connect:
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Editorials & Press
  • Ed Tech Sites
  • Lesson Plans
    • Elementary
    • Secondary
  • Former Weekly Podcast
  • About Me
  • Contact

Brainly: The World’s Largest Social Learning Network for Students

12/12/2016

10 Comments

 
Picture
Brainly is a social learning network designed for students to both seek out and provide help to their peers across all subjects and grade levels.  It is a completely free resource that can be beneficial for students looking for help as well as students who are interested in helping others in areas they are interested in.  It’s a wonderful resource, that provides lots of fun incentives for getting students involved with helping each other.  Let’s take a look!

Before diving into the review, let’s take a look at an introductory video from the Brainly team:


As you can see, the core Brainly is about helping students find answers to questions when they get stuck with school work.

My immediate question was of course, what about cheating?  What about students who are just going on the site to get answers to their questions so they don’t have to do any work?  

Fortunately, Brainly has done an excellent job designing this resource to help prevent against cheating both practically and philosophically, and we’ll discuss this throughout the review.


Picture

When students first login to Brainly after creating their free account, they’ll be presented with the main dashboard.  Big and bold in the center is the question, “What do you need to know?” which is a great place to start.

Students can filter questions by subject area or school level if they’re looking to answer some, or they can just type in their question to get started.

As the video above explains, you’ll typically get an answer to your question in under 10 minutes, which was my experience during testing as well.  It helps that Brainly has over 60 million users, so in general, students are there and ready to help.

Picture

To ask a question, you have to spend “points.” First off, these points are free - there’s no way to purchase additional points, no in-app purchases, or anything along those lines.  Instead, you have to earn points by helping answer other student's’ questions.  This is one way that Brainly facilitates the exchange of help, and also encourages students to find an area where they feel strong enough in to answer questions.

I really love this aspect of Brainly because I think it encourages students who may otherwise not view themselves as strong learners to find an area of strength.  This also helps those students see that even if there are areas they might not be good in, they can still offer help to others in need.

Picture

Another aspect of Brainly that I really love is the moderation provided by the Brainly staff, and this ties into my earlier question about cheating.  There is a big focus within the app on providing help that is not simply an answer to the question, but an explanation of the why and how.  

So answers that don’t provide step-by-step guidance, or detailed explanations, are typically flagged by the moderators and those students are asked to expand upon what they’ve written to provide more details.

Also, if a student gets an answer completely wrong, the moderators will let that student know and they’ll get a chance to revise their answer as well.  So there’s no criticism or blocking, just helpful feedback and a chance to make revisions.

Additionally, moderators are also on the lookout for questions that are very clearly test questions, and those get removed immediately as well.

Finally, in terms of cheating, when talking to teachers, Brainly found that most didn’t mind if their students were using other resources to figure out how to do something, they just wanted to make sure their students were looking at correct information.  

Personally, I agree with this philosophy wholeheartedly.  Students are going to use the internet to try and find help, and I think Brainly can be much more beneficial than sifting through Google or Wikipedia, plus it gives other students the chance to become teachers, which I absolutely love.


Brainly also does a lot to encourage participation through gamification.  In addition to getting points for answering other people’s questions, they have a list of the “Brainliest users.”  This list comes from those who get marked as having “Brainliest” answers by the question asker.

On top of that, there’s a list of challenges for users to complete, which can earn you more points as well.  These include things like “Answer 10 English questions in 48 hours to collect 100 points” and so on.


Picture
Picture

Looking ahead, Brainly is focused on building out student learning paths, so that each user will have a more personalized Brainly experience focused on their strengths and learning gaps.  The Brainly team wants to be sure students can set their own goals, and track their progress as they work in the app.

But even its current state, I’m a big fan of Brainly.  My first reaction, as I’m sure is true with many teachers, was a little hesitant, particularly in regards to my concerns for cheating.  But after exploring the resource, and seeing how students interact with each other and provide support, I found myself greatly appreciating the service Brainly is offering.  The chance for students who are typically viewed as lower ability to find areas of strength and to provide support to their peers is wonderful, and the gamification side makes Brainly a lot of fun to use.

On top of all that, having a community of peers where students can seek quick assistance outside of school hours is great, and means that students don’t have to spend time stuck on questions that they can’t figure out.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend checking out Brainly.  Give it a spin as a teacher, and see if it’s something you might want to recommend to your students as a source of help outside of the school day.  Or have your students provide help to others on a unit you just finished in your own class, to demonstrate their understanding of the topic, and then submit screenshots of the students they helped!  There are lots of great classroom applications, and in short…

Picture

​The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.

10 Comments
Hannah
1/9/2017 03:39:53 pm

One comment from parents that is hard to hear is "I need someone to teach me how to help my student with their homework, even I don't know the answer". I dislike this comment because it shows that when students are stuck in finding an answer, they don't have enough confidence to problem solve and find the answer themselves. Students first reaction is to ask their parents for help.

I do not view Brainly as cheating because it essentially is a resource for students. Using online resources to be a life long learner is a 21st century skill that students need. Why not enforce that skill when students hit a teachable moment during a homework assignment?

I can not wait to encourage my students to use Brainly. It sounds like a great site. I know that my students love earning badges on a variety of different technology programs. I am excited to see how they react to earning badges with Brainly.

I truly enjoyed reading your review. Do you have any suggestions for using Brainly in a 3rd grade classroom?

Reply
Mike
1/9/2017 03:56:33 pm

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for the comment and that's great to hear! I completely agree!

For third grade, I'd make sure they have some digital citizenship background before heading in, and maybe do some questions and answers together as a class if possible to get them familiar with the resource first. I also like the idea of giving them a choice of topics to answer questions about and then to show you screenshots or something along those lines of the different questions they answered and other kids that they helped out, I think that can be a really powerful learning tool.

Let us know how it goes! Thanks again for reading,

Mike

Reply
MV
10/19/2017 05:36:56 am

What I've found is that Brainly is used by students taking online courses to get the answers to questions INSTEAD of learning the material. They simply copy the question and paste it in Brainly to get an answer. This would mean that the student learns absolutely nothing. How do I know? I teach online courses. I can copy and paste ANY question from the software and paste it in Brainly and without fail, the question has already been pasted there by someone taking the same course using the same software. So ZERO learning happens! Students "using their resources" is BS. I promise you that almost all students who "can't find the answer" aren't really even trying. He/she just wants a fast and easy way to get course credit without actually trying to learn anything.

Reply
Mike
10/19/2017 05:59:19 am

Hi MV,

Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. I definitely see where this frustration can arise, especially in an online course.

My personal philosophy is, there will always be students who try to cheat, and there will always be ways they can cheat. In other words, if they weren't copying answers in to Brainly, they would copy them into Yahoo Answers, or into Google, or any number of other places.

Because of this, my philosophy is try and "catch learning" instead of "catch cheating." So how can I structure my course so that it's easier for students to demonstrate their individual understanding of topics? In an online environment, I have them create screencasts or recordings of themselves explaining how they would solve a problem, or I have them create their own problems/questions which can then be shared with their peers. Overall, just trying to have assignments where students explain their thinking and logic and processes, rather than just submitting the end result. While this doesn't solve all these issues, I have found it to be more successful.

But regardless, I definitely understand that it can be an issue to have students just copying and pasting answers in, and I'm sorry to hear you're currently facing that issue!

Thanks again for reading and sharing,

Mike

Reply
Mustapha S. Kiawu
8/22/2018 04:05:23 pm

I will like to appreciate all those who put their ideas together in bringing this educative media in present of all students.

Reply
Eric Steele
12/10/2018 11:04:42 am

Hate to see that you have given this site a score of "outstanding." I have worked for two online high schools and written curriculum for a third and every single answer for every question in the courses I have taught or written can be found on Brainly. Of the 76 plagiarized documents I have caught this semester all but two of them came from this site. Morover, Turn-In doesn't catch these acts of plagiarism since it cannot scan through the answers on Brainly to find copying. The only way you can catch it as an educator is to search the Brainly website for the question, then look through all the submissions for that question and each answer individually. This has created hours and hours of work on teachers parts going through the website to check and see if their student's actually worked on the question themselves. If Brainly would make it so user comments could be searched by Google and TurnIn then maybe I could see this site as anything other than just a den for cheating, as it is, countless students learn bad habits and slip through the cracks.

Reply
Mike
12/10/2018 03:39:18 pm

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the comments, and I understand your frustration, especially around Brainly not making it easy for their results to be searched in Google and TurnItIn. I have sent them a request about this, just to see if they have any intention of including this in the future.

But the reason I rated it 5-stars, similar to what I posted above is, my personal philosophy is, there will always be students who try to cheat, and there will always be ways they can cheat. In other words, if they weren't copying answers in to Brainly, they would copy them into Yahoo Answers, or into Google, or any number of other places.

Because of this, my philosophy is try and "catch learning" instead of "catch cheating." So how can I structure my course so that it's easier for students to demonstrate their individual understanding of topics? In an online environment, I have them create screencasts or recordings of themselves explaining how they would solve a problem, or I have them create their own problems/questions which can then be shared with their peers. Overall, just trying to have assignments where students explain their thinking and logic and processes, rather than just submitting the end result. While this doesn't solve all these issues, I have found it to be more successful in my own practices.

But regardless, I hear what you're saying, particularly in terms of Brainly not being easily searchable for plagiarism, and hopefully that's something they'll be able to remediate in the future.

Mike

Reply
John
6/15/2020 10:18:43 am

I heartily agree with Eric's comment. I'm posting this comment two years after the last one, and the problem still stands. I'm "teaching" an online summer school where Odysseyware is the proscribed curriculum and all of the answers are searchable by students without having to earn points. After looking at Brainly's website, I can appreciate the idea of crowdsourcing knowledge, but the end result, for my students, is providing an easier way to cheat. Granted, Odysseyware isn't the best curriculum, but there are some critical thinking components to their questions that none of my students are even contemplating. I appreciate the comment of catching learning, but as more and more "learning" is drifting online, standardized questions are the norm and Brainly hasn't in the two years since the last comment been able to halt the submission of verbatim questions and the sharing of answers. Brainly is one of my least favorite websites and seems to be a pay to pass setup. Yes, students are always going to look for the easy way out, but to cash in on this is foul.

Reply
Renee Worst
4/16/2021 07:19:39 am

I think you totally missed the mark on this one. As an educator, student use this site to mainly look up answers to homework and tests. My students will openly brag about using it to get through school. As far as students are concerned this is a site that allows them to get the answers without any of the work. It is especially attractive since their answers do not show up on plagiarism scans. So they are rewarded with correct answers and minimal risk of getting caught. As a previous individual posted, there is ZERO learning as a result of this site.

Reply
Mike
4/16/2021 07:53:38 am

Thanks Renee, I appreciate the feedback!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Reviews

    Here you can find the Round Up's collection of in-depth reviews on the latest programs, apps, websites, and more.

    Make sure to click the review's title or the Read More link for the complete review!


    Picture

    Featured

    Picture
    Check out our featured review | ClassroomAPP: A Complete, K-12 Digital Platform for Online and In-Person Classrooms

    Teach.com

    Picture

      Subscribe

    Subscribe

    Connect


    Awards

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed


    Archives

    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013

           
​Except where noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Picture

Copyright 2020 | Mike Karlin, Ph.D.