Overview of the Khan Academy
Sal Khan, a former hedge fund analyst living in Boston, Massachusetts in 2004, began tutoring his cousins who were living in New Orleans, Louisiana and in need of a deeper understanding of mathematics. What began with short and focused instructional videos with Khan teaching unit conversion using a virtual blackboard and talking through the logic of solving these problems, expanded to a library of over 2,100 instructional video lessons, 100 self-paced practice exercises and metrics to analyze the learner’s progress available for anyone in the world to use. He formed the Khan Academy as away to share his video lessons and help students better understand various math and science topics explained in ways that were different than how he was taught in the classroom and through textbooks. In referring to his experiences with math and science and the reason he is building this catalogue of lessons, Khan states:
“A lot of my own educational experience was spent frustrated with how information was conveyed in textbooks and lectures. There would be connections in the subject matter that standard curricula would ignore despite the fact that they make the content easier to understand, enjoy, and RETAIN. I felt like fascinating and INTUITIVE concepts were almost intentionally being butchered into pages and pages of sleep-inducing text and monotonic, scripted lectures. I saw otherwise intelligent peers memorizing steps and formulas for the next exam without any sense of the intuition or big picture, only to forget everything within a matter of weeks. These videos are my expression of how the concepts should have been expressed in the first place, all while not compromising rigor or comprehensiveness.” (http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq)
Khan refers to himself as the faculty of the Khan Academy since he creates all of the instructional videos. The Khan Academy has become viral; students and parents have found Khan’s resources exceedingly beneficial and a supplement for their foundational understanding of math and science.
Here is an example of one of Khan’s lessons:
What Christensen envisions as student centered learning enabled through computer-based learning systems, ultimately developed from bottom-up or grassroots efforts may start to be realized through the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy fits with Christensen’s believe that change can happen from forces outside of the traditional school system, and Sal Khan could not have embodied someone coming from outside the system any better given his background as an analyst at a hedge fund. All of the videos developed by Khan are freely available for anyone to use - in the classroom, at home or on the go through various mobile applications. The videos run from a couple of minutes up to twenty minutes focusing on:
- Mathematics
- Science
- Humanities
- Finance
- Test Preparation
o SAT Math
o GMAT
o California High School Exit Examination
o Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Joint Entrance Exam – IITs are some of the top engineering institutions in the world
o Singapore Math curriculum
Students, parents and teachers have found Khan's lessons extremely beneficial because learners have the opportunity to review topics and concepts that they may not have fully comprehended in the classroom or by reading the textbook. As Christensen discusses, in the classroom once a topic has been taught the class moves on together to the next topic regardless of all learners’ comprehension of the material. These videos allow learners to review concepts that they did not understand at their own pace, and they can review the video lessons as many times as they need to with the options to pause the video and go back to specific concepts using the scrub bar. If a student is learning a new topic and needs a remedial understanding of foundational concepts, the instructional videos provide learners an opportunity to spend time reviewing materials that will allow them to begin learning the new concept.
School districts are beginning trial the Academy’s lessons as part of a math curriculum, providing students with the ability to work at their own pace and learn new mathematical concepts. The Santa Rita Elementary School in Los Altos, California is currently piloting both the self-paced practice exercises and videos; the exercises encourage students to achieve ten correct answers in a row before they can move onto a new topic. If the student does not understand how to solve a problem they will have access to link to video lessons explaining how to solve the problem. Teachers and parents have access to detailed metrics to track how a learner is progressing through the self-paced exercises, how much time is spent with exercises and their success with the materials.
In the News and Media
The Khan Academy’s grassroots success has attracted media attention and funding from the Gates Foundation. Khan has been named one of Forbes Names you Need to Know:
The Khan Academy has been featured in the News Hour:
Distribution Platforms
The Khan Academy has multiple distribution platforms for delivery of their online lessons utilizing social media and mobile technologies including:
- iTunes U
- Various mobile applications that link to the Academy's library – Since Khan distributes these lessons freely, mobile application developers for iOS and Android have created applications that draw upon the catalogue of video content. The mobile applications range from replications of the catalogue of lessons, which will link out to specific videos on YouTube and are viewable on mobile devices to applications that will play the video lesson within the mobile application.
Mobile Application
The mobile application reviewed for this case study is the Khan Academy application created by Dennis Bond which is found in the Android Market. This application catalogues the available lessons and links out to YouTube video for learners to review the lesson. With YouTube built-in as default application on Android devices, the linkage between the application and YouTube is rather seamless. The application is simple, which for younger students is advantageous so that they can easily find the lesson they want and then view it on their mobile device. Bond’s application is not endorsed by the Khan Academy. Below are screen shots of the application
Please note: the mobile application linked from the Khan Academy website, created by Irynsoft was not reviewed for this case study as it would not properly launch on two Android devices, an HTC Nexus One (Android 2.3.3) and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Android 3.1).
Benefits for Learners
The Khan Academy provides learners with another set of resources to utilize that may better align with their learning styles. For students that have access to mobile devices or computers, accessing these video lessons may provide them with another way to approach solving a problem and ultimately aid in their comprehension. The Khan Academy's grassroots efforts have turned into a worldwide phenomena, and overtime it will be interesting to see how projects like the one in Los Altos progress. Additionally the metrics which are being collected on the website as student utilize the self-paced exercises will provide Khan with data to help him improve the lessons and tools available in his ecosystem. Khan's resources have helped students enhance their learning and will continue to do so in the future.
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