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United States24753 Posts
I've been hearing for a while (originally from TL and recently from more and more sources) about Khan Academy and how it is a great learning resource that is free to use. There seems to be a lot of hype and love for this service.
What I don't get is why all the fuss? I took a look at it when it was first mentioned to me and thought something along the lines of:
- Hm, free videos explaining things. Cool enough.
- From the sampling I just did, these aren't that bad but aren't particularly good either.
- I see he's greatly expanding his library. All right
Based on what I hear people say about Khan Academy, you'd think my thoughts would have been more along the lines of:
- Wow, look at this comprehensive list of high quality videos!
- Wow, this has all the information I will need on topic X. This is such a great tool!
... and yet I still get the meh feeling when I take a look around the website. I don't plan on going into specifics based on my observations since this isn't intended to be an attack on the service, but rather an opportunity to learn what I'm missing. I'm assuming I'm not completely wrong, but haven't taken a close enough look to get the true picture of Khan Academy.
What is your opinion on Khan Academy. If you are not a fan, why? Is it different from my reasoning so far. If you are a big proponent of it, please explain why clearly so I can understand! If it's a great tool and I am just not aware of it (due to a skewed perception) I'd like to find out. Feel free to link to example of good/bad stuff on the website if that helps.
Thanks, this has been bugging me for a while now and I'd like to get to the bottom of it!
 
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1. I think some of the charm for teachers is that it is a place for their students to find a second explanation of stuff they didn't understand in class, or if they missed a class, there is an easy to find video of a similar lecture. It would be a lot of work for a teacher to have a video of every one of their classes, and Khan has then available in some sort of order.
2. There are practice problems easily accessed so if you want to refresh your memory on something, you don't have to buy a book or do lots of searching online, you can just skim through the video, then do 2-3 problems.
3. For teachers, you can create a group for your class where each kid has a login, and you could assign them a video to watch, or problems to do. This lets them have a break from the textbook, could allow for you to help catch up kids who were sick, or missed class, or other things. You can then track your student's progress online since KA keeps track of stuff they did.
4. A lot of people find Khan's teaching to be very intuitive.
Overall, I don't think that KA provides anything specifically amazing, the teaching is good, the site is alright, the problems are good, everything is good. It's the combination of all these free organized resources that are decent which makes it so popular. Like you said, it is kinda meh, the hype comes from the summation of lots of mehs
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My experience (from the student side) is that since students spend quite a bit of time online nowadays, it's easier for them to just go to a centralized source of videos (and then go on facebook right afterwards and continue to complain about having too much homework) rather than to grab their book and open it up for about the same amount of material but less convenient.
Then again, I personally don't find KA to live up to its hype, nor do I have a terribly great opinion of how people go about learning things at my school, so take it how you will
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depends on where u take your undergrads, mostly. i've been at both a good school and a shitty as fuck one , and khanacademy is a blessing from the gods for the latter
also, it may just be the fact its in video format. young people of this day and age need lots of stimulation. the hardest part about studying is trying to not fall asleep or getting bored and checking facebook and the "quality" of the videos is they are upbeat and significantly more entertaining and involved than a professor droning on and on about a proof(which i don't mind personally) or reading verbatim from a textbook.
Also , teachers often go way too fast and blow past something that is necessary to know for the next problem, or concept so u spend the entire lecture scratching your head and writing down stuff and not really having a clue of what's going on.
With khan, u can simply pause the video, or rewind and rewatch something twice or more till u finally go "OHHH" and move on.
also, what are you comparing this to? mit courseware? there's not that many other video tutorials , esp organized as such. , afaik
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I love Khan Academy because my complete fool of a physics teacher last year failed to teach me anything whatsoever. I still managed to pull off a B in that course with use of Khan Academy and my own study.
Also, how can you not be impressed by the amount of videos? They are all done by one guy I think.
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On September 04 2012 00:55 micronesia wrote:
"Wow, this has all the information I will need on topic X. This is such a great tool!"
... and yet I still get the meh feeling when I take a look around the website.
Yeah because you are not looking for the content of the videos, you are looking at the video itself, that makes you go 'meh'.
Imagine you were thinking: 'Damn, I didn't understand what my teacher taught me today, and I have no idea how to figure it out myself.'
Then you look around Khan Academy. You find videos that explain the topic step by step, while you can repeat each section as often as you want, at any time of the day. And when you're done and you've understood everything, THEN you'll think: "Wow, this has all the information I will need on topic X. This is such a great tool!"
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United States24753 Posts
Thanks guys for your input. I'll respond specifically to a few things you said, but it generally seems like the 'good' thing about KA is that it is such a comprehensive list of videos. The quality of the videos seems second fiddle to this.
It seems to me like the quality of teaching isn't so much good as the comprehensive nature of the website makes it simply better than any online alternatives. Nobody who is really good at teaching in this manner has created a comprehensive list of videos on various subjects, so KA is king.
On September 04 2012 01:14 Trezeguet wrote:
1. I think some of the charm for teachers is that it is a place for their students to find a second explanation of stuff they didn't understand in class, or if they missed a class, there is an easy to find video of a similar lecture. It would be a lot of work for a teacher to have a video of every one of their classes, and Khan has then available in some sort of order.
2. There are practice problems easily accessed so if you want to refresh your memory on something, you don't have to buy a book or do lots of searching online, you can just skim through the video, then do 2-3 problems.
3. For teachers, you can create a group for your class where each kid has a login, and you could assign them a video to watch, or problems to do. This lets them have a break from the textbook, could allow for you to help catch up kids who were sick, or missed class, or other things. You can then track your student's progress online since KA keeps track of stuff they did.
4. A lot of people find Khan's teaching to be very intuitive.
Overall, I don't think that KA provides anything specifically amazing, the teaching is good, the site is alright, the problems are good, everything is good. It's the combination of all these free organized resources that are decent which makes it so popular. Like you said, it is kinda meh, the hype comes from the summation of lots of mehs
I didn't find the teaching to be that good in the samples I looked at, but it probably is just much better than the crap you usually find online. I think your summary at the end of your post might be "it" more or less.
On September 04 2012 01:20 HeavOnEarth wrote:
depends on where u take your undergrads, mostly. i've been at both a good school and a shitty as fuck one , and khanacademy is a blessing from the gods for the latter
also, it may just be the fact its in video format. young people of this day and age need lots of stimulation. the hardest part about studying is trying to not fall asleep or getting bored and checking facebook and the "quality" of the videos is they are upbeat and significantly more entertaining and involved than a professor droning on and on about a proof(which i don't mind personally) or reading verbatim from a textbook.
Also , teachers often go way too fast and blow past something that is necessary to know for the next problem, or concept so u spend the entire lecture scratching your head and writing down stuff and not really having a clue of what's going on.
With khan, u can simply pause the video, or rewind and rewatch something twice or more till u finally go "OHHH" and move on.
also, what are you comparing this to? mit courseware? there's not that many other video tutorials , esp organized as such. , afaik
It sounds like you credit the popularity mostly to the simple fact that it's a comprehensive list of video lessons, rather than any particular special thing.
On September 04 2012 01:39 Thaniri wrote:
Also, how can you not be impressed by the amount of videos? They are all done by one guy I think.
The number of videos is massive, but that doesn't make them good. Again, I'm not saying they are bad necessarily, just that I don't understand the hype.
So what do you guys think... if a competing free service was made that's similar in nature to Khan Academy but has better teaching quality, would you be interested? I'd think some of you would answer "yes, but only once the entire lesson series is completed for my course." That might shed some light on why people like Khan Academy.
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Well, yes. What a stupid follow up question.
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United States24753 Posts
On September 04 2012 02:21 Thaniri wrote:
Well, yes. What a stupid follow up question.
It seems stupid to you, but not everyone would answer the same as you.
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I came for pictures of January cultivating the next generation Storks.
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I think I had the same impression as you did OP.
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I think a lot of the allure of Kahn Academy is solely the amount of content. On a per subject basis there are better individual options, such as university open course ware. However having one site that a lot of different people can point to just by nature makes it larger. Some people might not know where to go for university open course ware, or other similar high quality material. This is of course all in the context of searching for resources for learning a subject, rather than just gaining an overview.
So to answer your question, I would definitely use any competing resource that offered better quality, if it was complete, I needed it at the time, and I could find it at the time. But since I'm in sciences I'd probably be better off looking MIT ocw.
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I'm trying UReddit at the moment. It seems like a great resource for a small list of courses. The courses are very fast and each can be done in a day. I think I'd only gain something if I were learning something I already had experience in, but there's a lot that formal education can give you.
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It helped me a lot to study for first year university physics. I found that most of the problems we had to solve on exams or otherwise tested for relatively the same understanding, so having the videos explain the concepts to me in a more straightforward manner than my professor or TA was great. It was a good supplement to what I picked up in lecture.
I never tried their actual classroom aspect of their website. Currently going through Coursera and trying out the self taught assignment/lecture combo.
Also this article seems relevant on the topic of online higher education:
http://blog.oreillyschool.com/2011/12/my-thoughts-on-codecademy.html
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obese and micronesia I've definitely had the same experience. Lots of people have recommended it, and I'm not even trying to be arrogant or anything (I'm no intellectual beast), but it really feels like the videos are there for laymen or people who have very little understanding of the subject matter and are not particularly adept at learning. In other words, I also thought that the videos are quite dumbed-down, and that they're not particularly useful for those who want to gain an understanding for topics covered in class. I've tried them a few times and they failed to explain things my teacher didn't try to explain. Definitely a quantity over quality sort of idea, I think.
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On September 04 2012 05:12 shindigs wrote:It helped me a lot to study for first year university physics. I found that most of the problems we had to solve on exams or otherwise tested for relatively the same understanding, so having the videos explain the concepts to me in a more straightforward manner than my professor or TA was great. It was a good supplement to what I picked up in lecture. I never tried their actual classroom aspect of their website. Currently going through Coursera and trying out the self taught assignment/lecture combo. Also this article seems relevant on the topic of online higher education: http://blog.oreillyschool.com/2011/12/my-thoughts-on-codecademy.html
Ahh. Coursera is for multiple Universities. My Uni just recently added some courses for it and just sent me an email so I thought it was just for us.
I think the biggest problem with these courses is that I don't have enough desire to go through them and I can't will myself to.
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True. As long as I'm on the Internet I'll be inclined to browse it and waste time while I'm trying to do work; more so when the coursework is actually online.
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Videos combine the advantages of live lectures and books. Human voice has higher information density than written text and books and videos make review much easier than live lectures.
From what I've seen the videos are pretty decent. Mostly looked at Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations FWIW. Maybe they are worse than most lectures at an above average university but the format means that most people will still get more out of them.
I haven't looked at the exercise platform that much but again the big advantage is the format rather than the content. Self-paced exercises and demanding proficiency is just so much better than what you have in most High Schools where ~50% of the kids are either ahead or behind the pace and don't get much out of problem solving sessions in class.
Basically, I think individualized learning with average pedagogy is better than mass-teaching with great pedagogy.
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On September 04 2012 02:12 micronesia wrote:Thanks guys for your input. I'll respond specifically to a few things you said, but it generally seems like the 'good' thing about KA is that it is such a comprehensive list of videos. The quality of the videos seems second fiddle to this. It seems to me like the quality of teaching isn't so much good as the comprehensive nature of the website makes it simply better than any online alternatives. Nobody who is really good at teaching in this manner has created a comprehensive list of videos on various subjects, so KA is king. Show nested quote +On September 04 2012 01:14 Trezeguet wrote:
1. I think some of the charm for teachers is that it is a place for their students to find a second explanation of stuff they didn't understand in class, or if they missed a class, there is an easy to find video of a similar lecture. It would be a lot of work for a teacher to have a video of every one of their classes, and Khan has then available in some sort of order.
2. There are practice problems easily accessed so if you want to refresh your memory on something, you don't have to buy a book or do lots of searching online, you can just skim through the video, then do 2-3 problems.
3. For teachers, you can create a group for your class where each kid has a login, and you could assign them a video to watch, or problems to do. This lets them have a break from the textbook, could allow for you to help catch up kids who were sick, or missed class, or other things. You can then track your student's progress online since KA keeps track of stuff they did.
4. A lot of people find Khan's teaching to be very intuitive.
Overall, I don't think that KA provides anything specifically amazing, the teaching is good, the site is alright, the problems are good, everything is good. It's the combination of all these free organized resources that are decent which makes it so popular. Like you said, it is kinda meh, the hype comes from the summation of lots of mehs I didn't find the teaching to be that good in the samples I looked at, but it probably is just much better than the crap you usually find online. I think your summary at the end of your post might be "it" more or less. Show nested quote +On September 04 2012 01:20 HeavOnEarth wrote:
depends on where u take your undergrads, mostly. i've been at both a good school and a shitty as fuck one , and khanacademy is a blessing from the gods for the latter
also, it may just be the fact its in video format. young people of this day and age need lots of stimulation. the hardest part about studying is trying to not fall asleep or getting bored and checking facebook and the "quality" of the videos is they are upbeat and significantly more entertaining and involved than a professor droning on and on about a proof(which i don't mind personally) or reading verbatim from a textbook.
Also , teachers often go way too fast and blow past something that is necessary to know for the next problem, or concept so u spend the entire lecture scratching your head and writing down stuff and not really having a clue of what's going on.
With khan, u can simply pause the video, or rewind and rewatch something twice or more till u finally go "OHHH" and move on.
also, what are you comparing this to? mit courseware? there's not that many other video tutorials , esp organized as such. , afaik It sounds like you credit the popularity mostly to the simple fact that it's a comprehensive list of video lessons, rather than any particular special thing. Show nested quote +On September 04 2012 01:39 Thaniri wrote:
Also, how can you not be impressed by the amount of videos? They are all done by one guy I think. The number of videos is massive, but that doesn't make them good. Again, I'm not saying they are bad necessarily, just that I don't understand the hype.
So what do you guys think... if a competing free service was made that's similar in nature to Khan Academy but has better teaching quality, would you be interested? I'd think some of you would answer "yes, but only once the entire lesson series is completed for my course." That might shed some light on why people like Khan Academy.
To go along with what you've said, try searching for a specific math explanation on youtube, it is amazing how many views those life leeching videos get.
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I think the Khan Academy videos are like meal shakes. It clearly doesn't compare to your local country club's massive breakfast buffet, but it's way better than 3 bowls of cereal.
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EPT
