Contents of Elearning! Magazine - MAY-JUN 2012

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

Page 24 of 54

learning!100 Khan Academy Re-Invents Education Repetition of lessons without the worry of
instructors being judgmental is one of the core tenants behind his educational approach. Kahn says that organizations should make videos of any lecture-based content, so that learners can review them privately and repeat them as often as they like.
In four short years, Salman Khan has opened educators' eyes to a whole new world of self-paced learning. Khan is the Founder of the Khan
Academy, an Internet site that offers 2,800 educational videos where 2.5 million stu- dents per month watch 300,000 videos per day. Its popularity among students and educators has grown ten-fold in the past two years and more than three-fold since mid-summer. Before long, its video les- sons will be translated into 11 languages.
A NEW MODEL OF EDUCATION FOR CORPORATIONS Khan sees the day when the academy's educational model is accepted by both educators and forward-thinking corpora- tions. "Some of the training courses I took and taught at Oracle were like traditional classrooms with PowerPoint,
" he remem-
bers. "But you need self-paced asynchro- nous learning, [because] it's a huge luxury to have people take a half-day off to show up at training seminars.
"
"It's much more interesting to show rather
than just tell." —Sal Khan,
Founder, Khan Academy
"On top of that, the content never really spoke to me," he added, "The presenta- tions were very sterile and cold."
22 May / June 2012 Elearning!
Salman Kahn, Founder, Kahn Academy
"It's much more interesting to show rather than just tell," he said. "Throw in
exercises, data, analytics, badges, awards, and then all of a sudden managers and CEOs can see what content is being con- sumed, how it's being consumed — and employees can do it on their own time, on the plane or from their iPad. It's a much richer, constructive way to learn.
"
INSTRUCTION WITHOUT JUDGMENT Classroom instruction consisted of lec- tures, and then students went home to do homework—often all alone with no immediate help available. That's where on-demand learning comes
into the picture. Students can repeat Khan Academy's YouTube videos as often as they need to understand a topic. "If I was tutor- ing and had to repeat something over and over, even the most patient tutor could get frustrated … and the student has the fear that he or she is going to be judged. "I didn't think that Khan
Academy would be main- stream in classrooms for a long time, because the edu- cation system is supposed to be so bureaucratic and resistant to change,
" Kahn
said. "But teachers were realizing that lectures were better at home because they could be replayed and reviewed many times." This freed classroom time for problem-solving and one- on-one interaction between teachers and students. Using the traditional
model, "teachers didn't have any information on how the students were doing until the exam. After the exam, there was nothing the teacher could do, because
they had to move to the next concept. The fixed thing shouldn't be the amount of time you have to work on something; the fixed thing should be the student mastering [each successive] concept. "Once the system says you're fairly
"
proficient in one area, it will move you down a 'tree' to the next area. Students can start at the most basic areas and move on; it's how you'
d learn a video
game or how to ride a bicycle. The vari- able shouldn't be your grade; the variable is how much time you take to actually learn the concept.
" Learn More:
Experience Khan Academy: http://youtu.be/vmtgz95ZBbE