Category: EDCI 339

In the Khan Academy homepage, learners are greeted by a slogan “You can learn anything” (Khan Academy). This was also the banner I chose from my last post, since I thought it perfectly captured the essence of Khan Academy. Amongst all other online educational platforms, it is without a doubt that Khan Academy is one of the most widely used all over the world. It was official established in 2009, and has kept on growing ever since. Its growth is not limited to the number of users, but also the amount and quality of online learning content.

In my previous post, I shared how excited I was about the growth of Khan Academy. I also briefly wrote about its history, as well as some specific principles that has made it the success it is today. For this post, my research aim is to further explore the success of Khan Academy by analyzing the main guiding themes that are followed by the website. After reading through several articles tackling the progress and development of Khan Academy, and how it is used in different learning environments, I found that there are major themes that make up the foundation of Khan Academy. These themes, although practiced in online platforms, are not limited to such environments. In fact, these can also be applied to any learning environment, in order to assure the educator that his/her students are maximizing their learning.

An Overview of Khan Academy

Before exploring the principles of Khan Academy, I will first provide a short background of the website. The mission of Khan Academy is “to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. (Khan Academy).” It is a non-profit organization that aims to deliver basic education needs to children around the world, as well as supplement higher education needs of students who are having difficulties in school or who need extra support in certain topics. Not only does Khan Academy cater to the needs of students, they also provide materials and resources to teachers. In the platform, teachers have the opportunity to find appropriate content, track the progress of their students, assign exercises online, and collaborate with other teachers around the world. Moreover, Khan Academy also enables parents to assist in their child’s learning by the creation of parent accounts that can also monitor learning progress.

The Concept of the Flipped Classroom

The founder of Khan Academy, Sal Khan, believes that there is no need for students to be segregated according to their age (Parslow 1). Usually, students are placed in grade levels on the basis of chronological age. Although this has been standard practice for schools for decades, research has established that this is not the best approach to education. Children, even though they are of the same age, have different and varied learning capacities and abilities. A child who has grown up in a home environment that speaks mainly English may excel in the English subject, while a child who has grown up in a home that speaks another language may find it difficult to keep up in English class. Hence, the practice of dividing children into grade levels based on age fails to take into consideration the cultural and societal backgrounds of children. Of course, it is quite idealistic to consider all these aspects, but nevertheless, it is important to remember these principles when it comes to a child’s education. Due to these reasons, Sal Khan has proposed the concept of the “flipped classroom” (Parslow 1). This concept acknowledges the differences of learning speeds of children, and allow children to learn at their own pace. Moreover, the focus of learning shifts from the teacher to the student, where the teacher is no longer he main source of information, but only a guide of learning. Parslow concludes that the flipped classroom approach to education has positive effects to learning (1). The concept of the flipped classroom is interesting, since it is a departure from traditional education. Moreover, it has shown positive results in the form of higher test scores and greater overall comprehension.

Studies that have explored flipped classrooms have shown that despite its positive results, such an approach also has its difficulties. One is that teachers may not be able to be equipped enough to handle technological advances in education (Zengin 89). The solution to this is to train and educate teachers on how to maximize such technologies, while at the same time, harnessing the potential of students in technology. Another challenge is the availability of software that can support such approaches. Although Khan Academy is fairly accessible, since it only requires a stable internet connection and basic computers, the usage of other software that can supplement learning may be hindrances to the flipped classroom approach.

The Personalization of Education

Mastery learning is a strategy that highlights the importance of small group or individualized learning (Cargile and Harkness 22). In other words, the smaller the ratio of learners to educators, the greater the learning outcome. In traditional classrooms, this ratio is pretty high. However, with the rise of online education, students now have access to more personalized and individualized learning. In the case of Khan Academy, students are engaged in one-on-one tutoring, small group learning, adaptive instruction, and immediate feedback (Cargile and Harkness 22). In this way, students are not pressured to hasten their learning simply to keep up with their teacher or classmates. They are given the freedom to learn at their own pace. Learning is not hurried, and therefore important principles are understood more comprehensively.

The Gamification of Education

Khan Academy also rewards its learners. When users go through lessons, they are given incentives to continue learning. For example, they can collect virtual badges and energy points for the completion of tasks and the answering problem sets correctly (Cargile and Harkness 22). This is different from other educational practices, wherein only correct solutions are rewarded, and effort is not acknowledged. It is important for learners to feel that their efforts for learning, albeit not always correct, are still acknowledged. This encourages them to learn from their mistakes and continue to try until they have mastered a certain skill or understood a particular principle.

Some Criticisms Against Khan Academy

It is evident that Khan Academy has gained success as an online educational platform. However, Schwartz argues that it still has its limitations, particularly in the learning materials themselves and the lack of contextual sensitivity (9 – 10).  He states that the learning materials encourage the shortening of the attention span, as they follow a strict time frame. This short time frame, around ten minutes, fails to foster a comprehensive understanding of the concept presented. In addition, because Khan Academy content is produced in the United States, it may lack some cultural sensitivities to students of other nationalities.

These concerns are valid. However, it fails to recognize that Khan Academy is not the main source of knowledge for students and educators. In fact, it is to be used as a supplementary tool for learning. Just because it has so much content does not mean it should be the main medium of instruction. The presence of an educator, whether it be a teacher or a parent, is still essential to the learning of a student. The lack of cultural sensitivity is also difficult to address. If one wants all videos to cater to all kinds of individuals, then the focus might shift from education to culture. This is not the aim of Khan Academy, and this is not helpful to learners either.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Khan Academy’s success stems from the following principles: learner centeredness (as demonstrated by the flipped classroom), personalized education, and gamified education. These themes are what contributed to the success of Khan Academy today. Interestingly, they are principles that do not fit into the traditional system of education. A learning system that acknowledges the individuality of each learner and rewards they efforts is one that will produce the best results. Knowledge is not treated as something that is merely passed on from the teacher to the student, but something that is personally understood and made sense of by each learner. In this way, principles are grasped more deeply and learning lasts until adulthood.

It is important to remember that teachers also need support in such progressions in education. Most teachers may not be able to manipulate or navigate complex technological systems, which is why education is not only for students, but for teachers as well. When shifting from a traditional style of education to a more technological and modern one, this is an important consideration.

Educational systems may be far from incorporating such programs into their curriculum, but the practice of such principles may help guide educational systems and educators to maximize the learning of their students. Moreover, these principles are not only helpful to the student, but to teachers as well. It is a difficult journey to start, one that goes against tradition, but one that is fulfilling and worthwhile.

Speaking of technology and education, I would also like to give some thought to my experience with the Learning Pod. It provided much value to my learning. Through it, I was able to learn from others, and I was not limited to my own thinking. I think, in any case, this is always a healthy approach to learning.

Works Cited:

Cargile, Lori A. and Harkness, Shelly S. “Flip or Flop: Are Math Teachers Using Khan Academy as Envisioned by Sal Khan?”. TechTrends, vol. 59, No. 6, 2015, pp. 21 – 22.

Parslow, Graham R. “Commentary: The Khan Academy and the Day-Night Flipped Classroom.” Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, vol. 40, no. 5, 2012,  pp. 337-338.

Schwartz, Marc. “Khan Academy: The Illusion of Understanding.” Online Learning Journal, vol. 17, no. 4, 2013, pp. 1 – 14.

Zengin, Yilmas. “Investigating the Use of the Khan Academy and Mathematics Software with a Flipped Classroom Approach in Mathematics Teaching.” Journal of Educational Technology & Society, vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 89 – 100.

Image Source: Unsplash

Traditional learning has long been a teacher-centered, one-way process. In a classroom, the chairs are fixed in rows, wherein students face the teacher and absorb the information given to them. There are interactive activities, such as group work and peer discussions; however, the teacher still has the main responsibility of providing knowledge. Moreover, the materials in such an educational setting were limited to textbooks and printed materials. These were not only expensive, but their distribution and use were limited to those who had access to them.

This has changed with the rise of the internet and other technological learning tools. Learning is no longer a one-way process with the teacher in the center, but one that is increasingly inclusive and interactive. Students, especially young people, no longer need to sit in a classroom with four walls in order to learn. Instead, they can access the internet and explore a whole new world of endless information and knowledge. This has been taken further by the concept of Open Education Resources, or OER. According to Bronwyn Hegarty, a lecturer in tertiary education in Otago Polytechnic, Open Education Resources and Practices have changed the process of learning and teaching entirely. Moreover, according to her, such resources and practices are ways in which the creation and use of educational tools innovate and improve the quality of education. This is a departure from a more traditional approach to education, and follow a trajectory of a more dynamic and open learning process, both for the educator and the student.

One of the main elements of Open Education Resources is participation. This is a practice in which both the educator and the student are involved in the learning process. As mentioned earlier, this is not the traditional approach to education. Open Education Resources and Practices promote participation in numerous ways. First, the medium or platform on which such resources are found are available to all through the web. This means that a student who may not have access to the physical copy of a book in the school library may instead acquire an electronic copy. Access to educational material is increased and made available to all, simply because of the nature of the web. Moreover, access is not limited to those who are enrolled in a university or who can pay for a library membership. Instead, no matter where you are in the world, you are able to learn from electronic resources. Second, the dynamics of learning has also been changed. Instead of learning from one individual, students are able to engage in peer-to-peer learning. Opinions, which are definitely varied due to the different backgrounds students come from, are shared and discussed. These discussions will definitely be more insightful that one taking place in a physical classroom. Students can then build on different electronic resources, leading to even more fruitful insights. Of course, there is a danger in this, as most opinions may go unchecked. After all, there is no teacher to monitor the thoughts and opinions of learners, and check if they are still in logical. This, I think, is the downside of unlimited learning freedom.

Open Education Resources are changing the way we learn and teach. It comes with much benefit, but also some danger in the form on unchecked knowledge. However, when knowledge is made more accessible to everyone in the world, then it definitely has more benefits than harm.

Source:

Hegarty, Bronwyn. “Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources.” Educational Technology, Volume 55, 4, 2015, pages 3 – 13.

In the podcast “Can Khan Academy Scale to Educate Anyone, Anywhere?” Brian Kenny interviews Bill Sahlman regarding the case he wrote for the Harvard Business Review about Khan Academy, the online global education nonprofit organization whose founder, Sal Khan, says its mission is to “provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Khan Academy, which started in 2006, seems to be on the right track to reach its goal, as it is now offering 40 subjects to 15 million monthly visitors from 190 different countries.

Kenny and Sahlman discuss one of the most important features of Khan Academy’s lessons, which is that they “chunk” educational material into videos that run a maximum of 10 minutes each. This is because YouTube, which was the original and still is the main social media platform that Khan Academy uses, originally had that as its maximum play length for videos. While Youtube has since increased their limit, Khan Academy still sticks to the 10-minute rule for their videos as it is incredibly helpful for learning. It accommodates the human brain’s limit for absorbing new information at one time, makes it easier to create educational videos, and create customized lesson plans around these videos. This has helped Khan Academy be one of the few online organizations that is embraced by public school systems, the US College Board, and students from around the world.

This is also the reason why Khan Academy was one of initial partners that YouTube announced for their new Learning Fund initiative. According to Dani Lee in The Verge, the Learning Fund is a $ 20 million program that YouTube is directing towards creators to improve and increase the educational content on the platform. Khan Academy is a trusted partner, meaning it will receive both funding and other support from YouTube to create educational videos that can be added to YouTube’s new Learning Playlist feature, which will be curated around topics such as math, science, music and language. This is especially useful both for people who want to learn on their own, and for educators who want to utilize YouTube videos in teaching their students.

However, there are downsides to Khan Academy’s usage of 10-minute videos on YouTube. Because they are an American company, these videos are primarily in English, often with subtitles available in other languages. However, these still render the videos inaccessible to the millions of learners around the world who do not speak English, particularly if they are unfortunate enough to not have subtitles available in their language. Also, being hosted on YouTube means that the learners become part of YouTube’s data algorithm monster. Their activity might be tracked, and be used to further tweak YouTube’s business practices to make it a more addictive platform. One of the bigger downsides of YouTube, which is its algorithm’s tendency to sometimes recommend videos that contain troubling, inaccurate, or otherwise problematic content while you’re watching videos about a topic, are mitigated by Khan Academy’s presence on the Learning Playlists, which will not have recommended videos or auto-play. I am also personally concerned if ads will be shown in these videos, or if they can be turned off. However, I am excited at what Khan Academy can achieve with their bigger platform and more resources.

Sources:

Kenny, B. & Sahlman, B. (2019, June 18). Can Khan Academy Scale to Educate Anyone, Anywhere? HBR Presents. Podcast retrieved from https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/06/can-khan-academy-scale-to-educate-anyone-anywhere

Lee, D. (2019, Jul. 11). YouTube is launching educational playlists that won’t include algorithmic recommendations. The Verge. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20690736/youtube-learning-playlists-algorithm-recommendations

I became very concerned after reading Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s article “A Guide for Resisting Edtch: The Case Against Turnitin”, because they made me realize how unfair Turnitin’s business practices is. Turnitin is widely used in universities and colleges for detecting plagiarism in students’ writing. It does this by comparing student’s works to a database of previously submitted academic writings.

However, where the scam occurs is that most of the works in Turnitin’s database are works it acquired through its service. All the works students submit through Turnitin automatically become the company’s property, and thus part of its database. Students are essentially paying Turnitin to steal their work. Turnitin gets paid twice – by the students who are subscribing to submit their work to the database, and by the instructors who use that same database to look for plagiarism in the work submitted by their students. In a way, students are paying to both get caught for doing plagiarism, and to help their teachers catch their classmates doing plagiarism. It’s an especially evil form of plagiarism, when you think about it. The closest analogy I could think of is of pigs paying the butcher to slaughter them and their friends and family.

Another metaphor that came to me is the mafia. Turnitin acts like a protection racket, where people need to pay or else they will be hurt. In this case, students pay to subscribe to Turnitin in order to prove to their instructors that they are not plagiarizing. In most cases, students do not have the choice to opt out of paying to subscribe to Turnitin, or to have their work included in Turnitin’s database. To choose not to do so would automatically brand a student a plagiarist in the eyes of their school. I think it’s especially tragic because it makes it so that students are presumed guilty until proven innocent. This is opposite of how criminals are supposed to be treated by the justice system, so the fact that this is how colleges treat their students, who are their playing clients, means that colleges and universities treat their students worse than the criminal justice system treats suspected criminals.

I agree with Morris and Stommel’s call for action at the end. It is time for educators to critically examine the role Turnitin plays in today’s educational system. Students need to stop accepting the presence of Turnitin as a fact of life, and need to inform their instructors and school administrators that they are being victimized by the company, and that either Turnitin changes its business practices or lose the patronage of their school. Most importantly, teachers need to start teaching again, not just letting a big data company do their job for them at the cost of their students’ intellectual property.

Source: Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2018). A Guide for Resisting Edtech: The Case Against Turnitin. An Urgency of Teachers. Hybrid Pedagogy Inc. https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/a-guide-for-resisting-edtech-the-case-against-turnitin/

After reading about the different modalities of online learning in Claire Major’s book, I was interested to see how these methods are applied in real life. Hence, when I began to read the part which presented different practical and real-life applications of multi-modal learning, I was happy that these learning tools were really utilized in the university system.

One example given was an online course entitled “Technology in Higher Education”, taught by Associate Professor J. Patrick Biddix of the University of Tennessee. The modalities of the course are as follows: enrollment is closed, it is completely online, the timing is asynchronous, the platform is do-it-yourself, and the pathway is decentralized. Moreover, he used at least three online tools to fulfill the learning objectives of the course.

The first tool was Blogger, which is essentially a personal blogsite. According to the professor, Blogger had all the necessary elements of an online learning tool, such as privacy, multiple contributors, widgets, and the possibility of discussions amongst other class members. It was through these features of Blogger that the professor was able to upload all the materials needed for the course, like the syllabus, readings, alerts, and a calendar.

Other tools that were used for this course were Coursera or Khan Academy. Discussion assignments revolved around these two tools, as students were required to explore certain topics and report on them by means of a review in their own blogs. A similar tool was Prezi, wherein students were asked to summarize their learning in a video or presentation.

In the end, the students were able to reach their learning objectives. Moreover, the course was conducted in an efficient and stress-free way, as the class never had to meet in person, and communicating assignments and tasks to the class was done solely online. This not only allowed students to learn in their own pace, but also allowed them to explore other online materials that may have helped foster more learning.

Source: Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.