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Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

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Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#131
post #56

Imagine a physics class with the budget of a Mythbusters episode. The result is pedagogically sound content, the best presenters, and a budget for graphics and special effects. With enough students, the cost per class is very low, less than what we pay for school now. Students will still need access to people to help when they have questions. And there is a need for some proctoring of exams/certifications. I expect t…

> the cost per class is very low, less than what we pay for school now. Personally, I think adding back the assistants for questions and proctoring will significantly reduce the cost savings (if not nullifying them completely) depending on how you implement them. > Then they will partner with local universities and community colleges > This will wipe out a lot of lower-tier schools. Aren't the lower-tier schools exac…

Don't really know how to feel about this kind of future. It's exactly the kind I'm sure many administrators want: they can downsize entire departments, subscribe to a "MIT Physics package", and just hire adjunct TAs for the class that are skilled in said MIT Physics package to field questions, issue the quizzes/tests.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#132

The concept of an online high school may sound terrible, but sooner or later it’s bound to happen: quality education will keep consolidating until there’s one super school left. Outlier is doing the same thing but on the college level: why deal with a mediocre local math teacher if you can get taught by the best?

As others have said, the fundamental challenge is that teaching, as usually defined, doesn't scale like that and that turning it into a non-interactive process removes much of what makes it more effective than just giving out a textbook.

Part of the problem is that many people take undergraduate lectures as a reference point and then think "well, there's no reason this couldn't be recorded, have interactive quizzes added, and then be better than physically attending a lecture of 200 people". That isn't wrong per se but mega lectures are barely teaching as it is and we should not be seeking to replicate them!

I know people bang on about the (much misunderstood) 2 sigma problem but I'm going to do it as well. Regardless of the exact result, we know a few things:

First, we know that intensive 1:1 tutoring moves the mean performance up by two standard deviations.

Second, we know from other research that there is a correlation between class size and performance.

That is obviously linked in that as classes get smaller, teaching styles can get progressively closer to 1:1 tuition. A class with ten people in it has room for a substantial amount of brief 1:1 interventions, especially if there are no behavioural problems in the group (so the teacher is not diverting massive amounts of time to classroom management) whereas a class of 30 makes that much more difficult.

Conclusion from that, plus the fact that undergraduate classes are often taught by research experts with no teaching nor mentoring in pedagogic technique, is that the undergrad chalk-on-board lecture with 200 students is at the far end of effective use of time from 1:1 tuition. So if tuition is the most "taught" of the learning styles, a large lecture is all the way over on the opposite end with "just read a textbook".

In fact, universities know this which is why they supplement lectures with grad-student led problem solving / discussion sessions, seminar groups, and small group tutorials. Some universities, for some subjects, use only small group tutorials (e.g. Oxford colleges for many humanities subjects) and lectures if they exist are very much optional. Most universities do not have the resources to do very much of this except for more advanced subjects but this has nothing to do with these techniques only being appropriate for such subjects - small group classes are also the most effective way of teaching Intro Calculus or Introduction to the Novel. Arguably they might be even more important in that context.

So the modern formulation of the two sigma problem to me is as follows: given that we can currently duplicate the (very bad) mega lecture format using technology, how much of the performance from actual teaching (the purest form of which is 1:1 tuition) can be captured using something less resource intensive?

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#133
post #66

There was an essay recently on HN on the merits of individual tutoring for children, in the spirit of Renaissance aristocrat education (not the exam-prep style tutoring that is common today). Projects like Khan Academy could make this extremely resource-intensive style of education a bit more accessible (not on their own maybe, but as a building block). Edit: PS: just remembered, if there were orgs like Khan or other…

Unless I've misunderstood the concept of aristocratic tutoring, I don't think a prerecorded video counts - even by a teacher as good as Sal Khan.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#134

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

Are you sure this effect isn't a combination of the in-person education culture, developed over centuries, having difficulties adjusting to a new paradigm; and the measures themselves (e.g the skill of "coming into class") not being appropriate for the new paradigm?

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#135
I can see this working if Khan World School sought accreditation in a large jurisdiction like Ontario, Canada. A student can take Khan's online math course, while still being enrolled in a brick/mortar school for things like chemistry and drama.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#136

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

One minority data point here.

I teach at a university in Japan. I have been teaching my classes exclusively online—live using Zoom—for more than two years, and overall the experience has been better than with the in-person classes I taught for many years before. The class discussions have been meatier and more focused than in person, and the students have been turning in better papers.

I recognize that the results would be different in other situations. I am fortunate to teach small classes of motivated students with good study skills. And as one of the “very online crowd,” I might have been able to adapt to online teaching better than some others.

But the big revolution of online learning is the opportunity it gives for people to take part in interactive classes regardless of their location. Yesterday I taught a graduate seminar with fourteen students, eight in Japan and six in China, including two in lockdown in Shanghai. Everyone was able to take part actively. Starting next Monday, my other graduate class will shift from afternoon to morning Japan time so that a student who is in Mexico and unable to return to Japan can take part in real time. This past Monday, one of the other students in that class was in COVID quarantine near Narita Airport but was able to participate fully in class.

Until recently, it was assumed that the only way to conduct interactive classes in real time was for the teacher and students to all be in the same physical location. If students couldn’t get to campus for whatever reason, they were excluded. Online education opens up educational opportunities for many people who couldn’t participate before.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#137

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

Damn I spent the whole pandemic reading books and doing my best to get ahead as such

How did everyone else mess it up so bad? I'm just reading this and thinking back to my resolve to use this time as positively as possible, like study and doing my best with savings was the most obvious thing at the time to me

Might be something to do with me living in the third world and adaptation culture being different

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#138
I swear I just had a dream this morning of partnering with Khan Academy on a new free education curriculum that focused on variation and deep dives. (I once had a story-based ed-tech platform)

Then I wake up to this announcement. (Brain exploding emoji)

This is the way.

Re: Khan Academy launches Khan World School online high school

#140

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (…

I see private tutors enrolling kids into Khan Academy and helping them pass the Khan Academy math courses. You get tutor help for your child, at the same time get some formal credit in the process.

Khan Academy has very strong brand recognition.

Many parents pay to have their child tutored. Partially because the quality of math teachers in high school is random (some are very good, others are not). Partially because one on one help is always very useful.

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