1. YouTube videos
Khan’s work started by accident, when his cousin Nadia
failed a maths test. Others, such as her brothers joined in and word spread. He
tried Skype but it was too unwieldy for four or more students, so he recorded
sessions and uploaded them to YouTube. The YouTube videos have proved immensely popular. There would be no Khan
Academy without YouTube, a good example of how synergistic online services can
mutually support each other. Innovation begets innovation.
He decided, boldly and deliberately, to keep the background
black, like a chalkboard and eliminate the talking head. This was to make
students feel as though he were sitting next to them not talking ‘at’ them. Faces,
he thinks, are a distraction from the content. The advantages of recorded videos include the
ability to stop, rewind, replay, take notes, hear again (especially if it is in
your second language), and for practice and revision.
Khan does feel that educators fail to act upon their best
research. Recognising that the
standard lecture is an arbitrary time period, based on the Sumerian base-6
number system, and overlong, his videos are relatively short. He
discovered that lessons of about ten minutes were long enough. He is particularly scathing about the
lectures he received at MIT, many of which he decided to skip. In fact, by
deciding to skip the “tired old habit of
the passive lecture” he managed to do many more courses, double in fact. His anti-lecture stance was confirmed
by his time at Harvard Business School, where case-based learning is the norm.
2. Flipped classroom
Having content on YouTube led to another innovation. On
homework he is highly critical of teacher training and the fact that most
teachers ‘wing-it’ on the design and setting of homework, with too much focus
on quantity not quality. This led to the idea of the Flipped classroom, the
idea that homework could do what was traditionally done in the classroom, deliver
core content, leaving teachers free to do what they do best in class, teach and
help students understand things they’re having difficulty with. He acknowledges
that it wasn’t his idea but his work allowed it to happen in practice.
3. Mastery learning
From the start the Khan Academy included question software
and, in adding a database early in its development, he found that the data was a
useful learning management tool. His ‘knowledge map’ concept laid out subjects
showing what depends on what, allowing recommendations on what should be taught
next, not in a strictly linear way, but based on dependencies, not moving on
until you had mastered the prerequisite learning. Mastery learning was his
adopted teaching method, and he recognises that Benjamin Bloom was an important
precursor. Self-paced learning was the means to deliver this mastery,
competence-based learning.
4. Streak assessment
He is critical of traditional assessment and
marking, claiming that partial success can be a problem. He calls it the ‘Swiss
Cheese’ problem. He is not against testing but poor and inadequate testing. So
on assessment he had streak tests of ‘ten-in-a-row’. He admits that ‘ten’ was
an intuitive’ number but wanted the tests to be aspirational as well as
motivational (when they got all ten right). In addition
to tools for tracking progress, tools for teachers and exercises, there is also
an adaptive online exercise system, that personalises the learning and provides
useful analytics.
5. Khan Academy in
schools
Khan Academy started to be used in schools, initially in the
Peninsula Bridge project in San Francisco. Early work identified the need to
identify who got ‘stuck’ where, which became a key and sophisticated
mathematical feature later in the development of the software. One of his
conclusions was that this approach could avoid the downside of streaming, which
tends to bake inequality into the system. By allowing competence-based
progress, this can be avoided. Another interesting finding was that students
who struggled at first, sometimes streaked through when they had gained
confidence, suggesting that Carol Dweck’s growth-mindset factor was at work in
maths.
It was an email from a black student, that said “…can say without any doubt that you have
changed my life and the lives of everyone in my family” that led Khan to leave
his well-paid hedge-fund job. By this point he was getting more views on
YouTube than Stanford and MIT OpenCourseware put together. Then, in 2010
Google, Ann Doerr and Bll Gates stepped in with finance and other pilot
projects started in Los Altos with positive results. Use in schools started to
expand significantly and globally. An interesting additional cohort of learners
started to emerge – adults and professionals, who wanted to improve or close
gaps in their knowledge of maths. Originally maths, the content has expanded into the sciences, finance,
medicine, art history, computer science and continues to expand in terms of
subjects and the number of videos and resources.
6. The One World Schoolhouse
His book,
The One World Schoolhouse, sets out a vision for a free global education.
Recognising that parents, and even teachers, may struggle with some subject
matter, he sees reliable resources as essential for progress. In addition to
the flipped classroom model, where students learn on their own through
personalized software and content, then the teacher acts as a coach, enabler or
facilitator, to do more sophisticated forms of teaching, the Khan Academy is
available 24/7/365. He feels that this can free teachers and learners from the
tyranny of time and location. Several other innovative ideas emerged in this
text.
7. Multi-teacher classrooms
Khan favours multi-teacher classrooms on the basis that
students and teachers are different and that variety on one side should be
matched by variety on the other. Peer support and learning would also emerge,
rather than isolating single teachers in their own classrooms. His vision is of
large classes of a hundred or more, of varying age, without fixed periods doing
a variety of tasks, including online learning.
8. Stop marking
He would get rid of letter grades, echoing Dweck, Black and
William. Students would have a running appraisal narrative, helped by software,
that leads to rich and fruitful feedback. Mixed age classes also allow students
to help each other, allowing assessment of other social skills
9. Stagger holidays
The ‘agrarian relic’ of the long summer holiday leads to
billions of dollars of infrastructure lying inert and empty. It is a period of
forgetting, except for the richer students who get enhancement through support
at home. He would rather see perpetual learning, with staggered holidays, as in
most other organisations
10. Decouple learning from assessment
He also recommends that we “separate (or decouple) the teaching and credentialing roles of
universities“. This would dampen out social inequality and open up access
and opportunities for all, as well as lowering costs and student debt. Less
lectures, frees time for more intern work, not just during the Summer and real
projects. Subjects would have online support from services like the Khan
Academy and others, namely good content plus adaptive software and student
tracking.
Criticism
Errors
appeared in some of the content, which he admits and corrects. and he has been
criticised for teaching without a deep knowledge of pedagogy. However, every
effort is made to re-record and correct errors and improve on teaching methods.
The flipped classroom concept has also been criticized for being difficult to
implement in practice, especially for students that are not compliant on the autonomous
work demanded by the model.
Conclusion
Far from being short of pedagogic knowledge, Khan is highly reflective
and critical of the failure of education to pick up on valid research on
lectures, competences, homework, efficiencies, cost, forgetting and learning
styles. Khan doesn’t like the way education ignores clear findings in research,
as it hangs on to the past and fails to innovate. He is also critical of the
cost of education pointing out the very high cost of traditional schooling with
much of the budget spent, not on teachers but adjunct services. His belief is
that the ‘enlightened’ use of technology through ‘technology enhanced teaching’
is the answer. Technology needs to “liberate teachers from…largely mechanical
chores”.
6 comments:
Donald,
Khan, Robinson and Mitra all have important things to say about education.
While Khan has actually done important educational things in practice and on scale - I wouldn't get drawn into the traditional competitive educational narrative of who is better than who - combining their views gives a strong narrative about education.
Disagree here Martin. Education needs to make choices. I'd rather go with the people who genuinely have sustainable impact and effect change. I also happen to disagree with both Robinson and, especially Mitra, who, in my opinion do more harm than good. This is not about the people, it's about better theories, ideas and impact.
"...criticized for being difficult to implement in practice, especially for students that are not compliant on the autonomous work demanded by the model"
Its well worthwhile pointing this out as its almost the elephant in the room. Ive implemented a flipped classroom in a number of my university classes and ~25% actually undertake the work. Those that havent then have difficulty participating in the class itself which then leads to decreases in attendance. That said, those who do participate see increased success.
So..... what proportion of (school/HE) learners are not autonomous and how can we shift them to autonomy. The school system in the UK has been forcibly directed down this route by increasingly shifting the responsibility for learning from the student to the teacher. If a student doesn't succeed it's the teacher's fault. Whilst you do have to deal with poor teaching, we are breeding students who believe their success is the responsibility of someone else and they don't realise that nobody particularly cares in the workplace. You do the job or lose it..... and you don't get 25% extra time for dyslexia (or anything else).
Agree but there are ways to scaffold the flipped model. The problems arise when students are asked to simply watch video lectures on their own. It needs active learning and assessment. Poor teaching is still a factor, especially in Universities. Stufied show that huge numbers of students simply don;t turn up to dull lectures, even at the most famous universities, Harvard etc. I've witnessed appallings tandards of University teaching over 40 years, similarly in schools. I take your point about the flipped model but to put most of the blame on students is to mask the true cause - poor, outdated teaching.
I admire Khan, hugely in many ways.
In others, I have issues.
The work he does is admirable, idealistic, free to access and speaks to a lot of what's best in education. It;s also a classic and affirming example of the essentially altruistic capacity of the internet. He's trying to address what he sees as real problems concretely, and he's dedicated to providing teachers and students with a range of tools to help them on their way.
On the other hand, his take on the history of education is wrong. flat earth style wrong. Education hasn't changed in 150 years? Dear Lord. That's hubristic, and plain profoundly wrong.
Flipped classrooms are lomng established. Ausubel's Advanmce Organisers are one example, and literature classes where you read the book inadvance and then turn up in class to discuss it are another.
I also womnder just how much that mindeset of a static educational monolith has blinkered the Academy.
I'd also argue that the material itself is not particularly good or interesting. I'm a history buff. And the history sections bore the pants off me. I got so bored I stopped watching.
I'm not up to date with the researchk, but the admittedly nascent research on flipping classrooms doesn't seem to indicate any particular positive effects.
I think Khan's aims are good, but his material and pedagogy seem...well. They seem old in some ways, conservative...they seem like BF Skinner Teaching Machines reheated for a new medium. Or like watching the Open University on late night BBC, but not as good. I'd watch late night OU voluntarily. My experience with Khan has not been so positive.
I also seem to remember Khan talking about how his studenmts could fast forward and rewind his lectures as if this were something the internet invented...
It;s also easy to find anecdotal evidence of student's reviling their Khan Academy work. Audrey Watters linked to a massive forum where the criticisms were...spirited...on the parts of students.
Donald, thanks for this overview on Khan. Pedagogy has long been one of my passions. I learned that I was doing flipped learning at the university level before it had a name, primarily because of class size, upwards to a 100 students w/o grad assistants. Interestingly, the greatest opposition came from colleagues rather than students who signed up because of my evaluation methodology. Although I still tested and marked, the tests were a barometer for them and me to measure how they were doing. Students were assigned to small groups and encouraged to discuss the tests and evaluation tools, both for their benefit and to assist me in improving the evaluations. Tests could be retaken 3 times to improve performance, with the last being aural. No student ever requested this choice. Nonetheless, students could fail all exams, except the final, and achieve mastery in the courses depending on how they performed on the final. A student would have to be totally disengaged from a course and their group, however, not to succeed or even just be average, since attendance was mandatory and peer pressure was used to promote attendance.
This experience revealed to me that collaborative learning had more successful outcomes and long-term benefits than independent study. Students who took my classes whose GPA was 2.0 or less their first 2 years at the college improved to 3.0 or better their last two years in a 4.0 system.
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