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How well does Khan Academy teach?

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#31

Post by binxbolling »

mgurlitz wrote: post #23
latch wrote: post #9

This article is a critique of the traditional aspect of teaching (having a teacher lecture students). This is obviously important, so it's good to have professional educators provide feedback. However, I thought the aspects that was supposed to be "revolutionary" was detailed tracking and analysis of students and that feedback loop (either back into the system, to the student themselves or to teachers). They seem to…

I think one of the most groundbreaking ideas they have is "flipping the classroom" [1], where students watch Sal's videos at home before class for homework, then in class they work on problems with the teacher and other students. That's where the ability for teachers to track and target deficiencies really becomes powerful. [1]: http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/story/2012-05-30/sal-kha...

I have seen this firsthand in Massachusetts and it was very powerful. The kids were all clustered around iPads or Macbooks, helping each other, doing problems, and reviewing what they learned for homework. The teacher was rotating around the room, helping stuck kids, encouraging others to do peer-to-peer coaching, etc. It was so absurdly different than how I "did school," yet so logical. The teacher felt she could now really differentiate her instruction, and the kids were impressively engaged. Gone are the days of 40 minute lectures and 10 minutes of practice— you know, where the kids who got the lecture blaze through worksheets and the rest sit dumbfounded and then take all their problems & questions home for the evening.

All that to say: yes, a dude sketching some problems on a tablet is not the "revolutionary" part (if there is one at all) of Khan Academy.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#32

Post by gizmo686 »

anon_d wrote: post #2

Fuck that noise. If you don't like it, do it better; all this whining and nit-picking is without value. Khan Academy is innovative and game changing, but you can't innovate by insisting on perfection.

No, but after you inovation comes incremental improvement. If Khan Academy does not do this (and I have no idea weather or not they are), then another group will take their highly inovative idea and do it better.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#33

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ColinWright wrote: post #26
UK-AL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but I think a lot of people are making up criticisms in order to justify ignoring it. Where i was taught we still had the exact same decimal problem khan has... The best way to deal with it is through continuous refinement until criticisms are few

> The best way to deal with it though is > continuous refinement until criticisms > are few And for that you need the criticisms.

I regularly find that the criticisms you see launched across the internet at various projects are a lot less worthy than the criticisms that they generate internally. I'm of the mind that if you believe that something is valuable or worthy you should criticize it because that is how it will improve. And as such I quite look forward to reading criticisms exciting new projects like say Wikipedia or Khan Academy.

I am, almost without exception, deeply disappointed by the knee-jerk reactionary defensiveness you generally find in these things. Conversely, you go visit Wikipedia itself and it has insightful comments about how its user base tilts the content away from the global south, women, the poor etc. and constructive ideas for how to measure and ameliorate such issues.

I think it's only natural for people to react to such uninformed, accusatory criticism in the way they do. It reminds me of John C Dvoraks anti-Mac columns from years ago, which he later admitted were professional trolling.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#34

Post by ht_th »

ColinWright wrote: post #12

I spend a lot of my time in outreach, enhancement, and enrichment activities, and I've now met several people who have taken to watching lots of the Khan videos. Some of them are doing spectacularly well, possibly partly because of them, although correlation versus causation, etc. However, I have had some seriously worrying conversations with people who have some deep, deep misconceptions, and who believe they have b…

I agree. There is no doubt that Khan Academy is revolutionizing education, but it revolutionizes most and above all teaching, not learning. It enables students and teachers alike to get access to a wealth of instructional materials at any time, any place. It gives a second perspective on the material under study. It allows those that have forgotten a lot of the material to pick up again fast. It enables teachers to turn traditional lessons around: in stead of instruction in class and homework at home, one now start thinking about delivering instruction at home and do problems in the school environment.

At the same time Khan Academy's video lectures cannot take into account the prior knowledge of students but for what other videos have been downloaded at Khan's. It cannot take into account students' background, wishes, problems, disadvantages, and so on. There is no interaction, there is no conversation going on between teacher and pupil, pupil and pupil, and in the social environment of a class.

Furthermore, most videos and exercises seem to focus on repetition, rote learning, and giving correct answers. There is no room for exploring alternatives, errors, hypothetical situations, and what not.

Over-all, and most importantly, I wonder if Khan Academy does support/instigate/promote deep learning of the topics covered. And is that actually possible the way Khan Academy is set up?

Observe that Khan himself doesn't claim nor suggest so, but many who hail Khan as the savior of education seem to equate education with learning and, as a result, claim Khan's revolution in education as a revolution in learning. To me, these aren't the same and this pollutes the discussion between educators and fans.

To summarize: I think Khan's revolutionizing education but he isn't revolutionizing learning

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#35

Post by Jtsummers »

cmwright wrote: post #3

I find the notion that these videos are ineffective baffling. When I found these videos during my university calculus course, they literally saved my grade due to the extremely poor quality of my professor (and TAs). I find Sal to be incredibly effective, no nonsense teacher who at this point has probably taught me 5 or 6 different subjects with efficiency that no professor, nor TA has provided. As a recent graduate:…

The critique wasn't that they are innefective, it's that they contain poor pedagogy. Their specific examples are from arithmetic videos, where the presentation and notation is inconsistent or the examples/problems were insufficient and could easily lead to misunderstanding the material. Your experience is with the calculus videos. It's possible the criticism doesn't apply to them. Or because you were a more advanced student of mathematics and were being provided feedback from your course any poor use of notation or poor problem sets wouldn't have had the same, potentially negative, impact on you.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#37

Post by delwin »

Any critique that world-class teachers give Khan Academy would apply to most K-12 math teachers as well. I think people are worried because Khan Academy can spread much further (and do much more damage) than a conventional teacher, who is fired if standardized testing scores drop below an arbitrary amount.

BUT the same effect is seen on Wikipedia, which has been reviewed and corrected more than thousands of other encyclopedias, simply because it's so open and accessible. Khan Academy was originally run by one guy, but they're starting to open up and partner with other educational entities. They aren't going to go unchecked. By no means is Khan Academy hurting the education system, unless you look at things from an economic or political standpoint, in which case it's potentially disruptive. But that would be cruel, wouldn't it?

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#38

Post by jerf »

jcromartie wrote: post #27
ColinWright wrote: post #12

I spend a lot of my time in outreach, enhancement, and enrichment activities, and I've now met several people who have taken to watching lots of the Khan videos. Some of them are doing spectacularly well, possibly partly because of them, although correlation versus causation, etc. However, I have had some seriously worrying conversations with people who have some deep, deep misconceptions, and who believe they have b…

> some of the things these people believe they've learned from the KA, and believe must be right because they (think) they've seen it on KA really worry me What kind of things? Are you suggesting that flesh-and-blood teachers or brick-and-mortar schools are less likely to spread misinformation or leave students with misconceptions? I can tell you a hundred false things I was taught by "real" school, and some of them…

Truly the greatest enemy the online education revolution faces is not the current education system, but the way that people secretly substitute the real system for this mysterious magical perfect system based on the assumption that the stated goals of the current system are actually its result, and compare online against the myth instead of the reality.

Goals aren't results. Compare real to real. The real competition isn't the mythical fantasyland where everybody learns everything perfectly and retains it forever as a result of the gentle teachings of the schoolmarm. The real competition is the system that produces the real people you really run into as you go about your day, doing real things. If online education in its currently very early state even manages to sometimes match the real world, at one-tenth the price or less, you can imagine what another ten or twenty years of refinement is going to produce for the online model.

And in that real comparison, online will definitely not always win today, and will always have weaknesses. Shop class seems unlikely to work well online. (But then, the real school systems shut down those classes 20 years ago....)

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#39

Post by farrelle25 »

Caerus wrote: post #17

I'm really starting to believe that these "critiques" of Khan Academy are just teachers and professors terrified of becoming irrelevant. The question shouldn't be "How well does Khan Academy teach" (well, maybe someday). The important question right now is "Is Khan Academy a better learning tool than most high school and college teachers?". In my experience, the answer overwhelmingly is "yes". I did have some truly f…

Totally agree with this.

I've just finished a BSc Physics-Math at a UK "Top 20" University. The standard of many lectures was very poor with only a few exceptions.

Without Khan Videos I wouldn't have grasped many of the concepts. (The lecturers often presented the formalism without really going into the concepts - I often wondered did the really understand the material themselves)

Apart from online material the only other self-study stuff I found useful for the degree were course books from Open University (OU). Excellent stuff.

Re: How well does Khan Academy teach?

#40

Post by bhntr3 »

This article reeks of an academic defending his turf to me. Basically, it all comes down to the author accusing Sal Khan of willfully ignoring research. This is based on a quote that I believe is intentionally misinterpreted. Khan says "you put stuff out there and you see how people react to it". This is basic web testing stuff. That doesn't mean he's ignoring research. Like we don't willfully ignore design best practices with the assumption that A/B testing will sort out the UX. That would be stupid.

I like Khan Academy's videos. But if you watch Khan's TED talk, it's clear neither he nor bill gates sees khan academy as operating outside the education system. His lectures are meant as a complement to quality instruction in classroom by a teacher. Criticizing the Khan academy ecosystem as an independent and parallel instruction system is silly.

Khan is a great lecturer. He's better than every lecturer I've had. He may not be the best total educator. I wrote a blog post about this a while back: http://cyclicreality.com/post/26719449459/why-khan-academy-i...

The hype may be too much. Maybe it's not revolutionary. But getting a teacher who can explain and engage recorded and available free online is a great idea even if it's not the be all and end all of education.

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