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Aatash from Khan Academy here. As the mission mentions, in addition to providing free learning materials, we care deeply about making the quality of those mater
by aatash 13y ago
Aatash from Khan Academy here. As the mission mentions, in addition to providing free learning materials, we care deeply about making the quality of those materials the best they can be.
We work with a lot of teachers who use Khan Academy in their classrooms year-round, giving us constant feedback on how students are interacting with the videos and exercises, in terms of both what's working well and where the gaps lie.
We have also worked with education researchers, and we're constantly studying various models of learning. And more than anything, we learn from testing and feedback from our users. As mentioned in Ben's comment above, we like to ship. We like to put stuff out there for folks to use (especially when learning is at stake), and take feedback and improve from there.
Khan Academy's role in education is a varied and ever-changing one. More than anything, we want to provide a tool/resource for knowledge and learning that's high quality and accessible. How people choose to use it--whether as standalone learners at home or through integration in a classroom environment* --is really up to them.
* We've put up some great videos/articles on how teachers are using KA now, and what our vision for its use in the classroom is:
https://www.khanacademy.org/coach-res/KA-in-the-classroom https://www.khanacademy.org/coach-res/KA-in-the-classroom
- foobarqux 13y ago> We have also worked with education researchers, and we're constantly studying various models of learning. Can you elaborate? What discoveries have you made? How have you advanced the state of the art?
- geonz 13y agolOVE THE lip service. It's extremely consistent with the KA view of "school" -- get the assignment done, collect the cheque. I'm sorry, but "quality" is not the lesson described in the "open letter. Quality is not telling students 2 plus itself times one is the same as two times one. Quality is not stating that concepts are incredibly important, but an average "sort of represents" a group of numbers. Quality is not mixing impossible problems into an introductory lesson, and assuming advanced background in elementary lessons. Quality is not ... Khan Academy. GO back to your little insulated groups and the folsk who buy your slick sales talks. Quality would involve listening when people raise questions and addressing (wait a minute) the actual questions they raise! But you can't! Please, though, don't believe that people who actually work with students who are actually trying to understand math think that what you've got is going to help. It's fine for all those folks who just need to crank out a mess of problems, factory assembly-line style. There are lots of people who have this crazy idea that learning math should be more.
- aranglancy 13y agoI'd also like the hear more about your work with educational researchers. In what way does research on learning effect KA's development? And specifically what learning models are you looking at and how are those learning models influencing the videos and exercises you create?