The Khan Academy: MOOC meets the flipped classroom

The Khan Academy is innovating education, taking lessons out of the classroom, establishing mastery, and maximizing technological potential. The academy is a not-for-profit organization hosting an extensive video library on hundreds of subjects at various levels of complexity. Access to the clips is available via the organization’s site or on the academy's You Tube page.

This approach incorporates the concepts behind MOOCs,  massive open online courses, and the flipped classroom.  In Khan Academy’s method learning happens on the student’s time and online, interactive time is used to practice methods and co-teach. All lessons are free and self-paced where mastery is the ideal goal, but does not necessitate all students move at the same pace as in a traditional classroom. Khan Academy’s methods allow for infinite variation among students to achieve mastery level. An October 2nd article in Slate Magazine by the academy’s founder, Salman Khan (2012), explicates his belief in this system; he explains Khan Academy is a learning method for the future because it incorporates educational technology with high-quality teaching while maintaining such a low cost that the information is available to a wide audience.

Later in October, Wired Magazine ran a piece about one of Khan Academy’s teachers, Vi Hart, a self-proclaimed mathemusician. Although not trained in mathematics, Ms. Hart incorporates her passion for math with a penchant for music and catchy summary. However music is not her only means of conveyance. In a short You Tube clip on her website, Ms. Hart illustrates the Mobius Strip and symmetrical properties of a popular childhood candy treat: Fruit by the Foot.

Despite the media buzz, including laud in 2010 from Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and from Businessweek last year, Khan Academy has experienced some criticism in 2012.  A short series from July in the Washington Post by Valerie Strauss highlights some shortcomings of the academy’s methods, primarily focusing on a lack of rigor in the math videos produced by Salman Khan, the academy’s founder.  In some instances, Khan completely gets the math lesson wrong.

The debate surrounding Khan Academy remains pitted on whether or not Khan is a good teacher. No one debates the selflessness of offering free, online courses or the academic research-based focus on self-paced mastery; those are in line with current educational thinking. But how effective can a tool be when the experts in a subject make mistakes, which is not a terrible end, but then refuse to engage in a rational dialog to come to a consensus? Instead of focusing the debate on how to improve teaching and learning, the Washington Post instead deemed it more important to feature an argument between two experts. Further no one has made mention of how this potentially positive technology can be adapted or made available to those without internet connectivity or access to computing devices.

Source links:
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse
http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy
http://educational-technology-vub.blogspot.be/2012/10/mooc.html
http://educational-technology-vub.blogspot.be/2012/11/flipped-classroom-backwards-classroom.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/video/conversations_with_slate/2012/10/salman_khan_on_the_youtube_lectures_and_teaching_tools_that_power_the_khan_academy_s_mission_to_revolutionize_education_video_.2.html
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/10/start/maths-x-music-=-magic
http://vihart.com/
http://vihart.com/blog/fruit-by-the-foot/
http://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/v/bill-gates-talks-about-the-khan-academy-at-aspen-ideas-festival-2010
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/khan-academy-the-hype-and-the-reality/2012/07/23/gJQAuw4J3W_blog.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/khan-academy-readers-weigh-in/2012/08/02/gJQA83rW9W_blog.html