What’s the dealio?

ü  Lecture. Problem set/homework. Exam. This familiar cycle of “learning” must be broken in order to keep students engaged.

ü  An extremely high concentration of college students are struggling in their classes and resorting to supplement materials in order to understand core concepts.

ü  Students struggling to grapple concepts in class will try to re-learn or teach themselves the information from their corresponding textbook.

o   If they then do not understand, they might be brave enough to ask a question or two in class during a lecture, but more often times than not, students will remain silent in hopes that the period will magically unveil the missing nugget of information they may have missed the class before.

Reality check!

These struggling students will fall farther and farther behind and in order to save face, students will resort to supplement resources to replace what they have not been able to understand in their classes or primary textbook.

Not Convinced?

An example of this is when students will read Sparknotes and use these detailed “notes” in place of actually reading the book. [You know that it’s true!] Who wouldn’t mind understanding the entirety of Shakespeare within a matter of roughly 70 pages!

One of the reasons why college students are not learning in and out of the classroom is because they do not understanding the lectures and are finding themselves falling behind in their homework assignments due to the lack of understanding. Time that should be used to learn and reiterate concepts in the classroom is not being spent efficiently to help students retain the information. Thus, students are spending twice as much time trying to figure out on their own using various supplements and online tutorials such as Khan Academy to supplement the incomprehensible information received in the classroom. 

Khan Academy

Who Started it? Salman Khan 

      

Who’s that? 

Salman Khan is the son of immigrant parents from India. Born and raised in New Orleans, Khan was widely recognized for his intelligence. With an MBA from Harvard and three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and a master’s in electrical engineering and computer science. Beyond the classroom, Khan was the President of his MIT class, did volunteer teaching in nearby Brookline for talented children, as well as developed a software to teach children with ADHD.

How did it get started? 

In the summer of 2004 when his 13-year-old niece Nadia was having difficulties with math and requested that he tutor her. She lived across the country and in order to adequately assist her, the two would simultaneously watch as Khan used Yahoo Doodle to write out math equations. They also talked over the phone so Khan could more easily explain the step-by-step process he was demonstrating on the Yahoo Doodle. After multiple requests, Khan began to simply post video recordings for Nadia. She described it as being much easier because she was able to fast-forward through parts she already knew as well as review the material she needed extra help with as many times as necessary.

LIGHTBULB!!   

It was with this revolutionary idea that Khan realized the magnitude of private learning in the relief of one’s own comfort level. Not soon after, Khan launched of Khan Academy in late 2006

The website has remained as a non-profit organization and has gained the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Google!

The tutorials are completely free; anyone is able to access them without a subscription and users are also able to wander the sight without being inconvenienced by numerous ads. Khans states, “Our goal of optimizing learning never conflicts with profit maximization,” (2010). Their goal has been proven successful.

What makes it so special?

Ø  In any given month, Khan states that he reaches about 200,000 students through his tutorials.

Ø  There is a recording of 91 million (and counting) views so far, the majority of which come from the United States, followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India (Kaplan 2010).

Ø  The growing tutorial library consists of roughly 2,700 videos that last from 7 to 15 minutes long. The topics cover kindergarten through 12^th grade math as well as science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics.

Ø  After each video, users are able to practice their knowledge by answering a series of questions. The concept is based on mastery-based learning in which the individual must answer 10 questions correctly which grants them the ability to advance to the next level with harder questions.

Ø  If they desire to, teachers and students can create logins that are able to track all the information gained during these periods of learning. The site is able to monitor and collect data on student’s attention, efficacy, how long it takes them to complete a tutorial, how many times the student needed to repeat, as well as the metadata and ratings on quality, difficulty, and importance.

Alternative Learning

            Blame cannot and should not be placed on one single entity, whether that is the student or the educator. What blame can be placed on is the traditional cycle of education itself. The repetitive sequence of teaching continues to be taught because it has proven to work in the past. This reliance on an old and outdated method of instruction should be closely looked at and scrutinized. Future educators must be informed of different types of learning methods that can be incorporated to the dull lecture-problem set- exam cycle. This study wants to discover how the online website KhanAcademy.org can be used as a different medium for instruction.  It aims to discover how the site can be used to change how college students are learning in and out of the classroom by investigating the following questions: How do these tutorials affect student’s learning? Is distance learning in Khan Academy’s format hindering or contributing to the classroom? Will the online tutorials provided by Khan Academy become mainstream? Throughout the study researchers will address these questions using quantitative analysis of college students’ perceptions on the usefulness of the website and how it benefits or hinders them from their traditional courses as well as online courses.

           

If I could do a study on Khan Academy

Procedure

v  The study will include an analysis of general Khan Academy users as well as undergraduate college students through a survey questionnaire and school administrators/professors through in-depth interviews.

v  The survey will be made optional and offered on a page right before users are able to view a tutorial and will be posted on the site for one full academic year. The questions will be two open-ended questions inquiring the purposes of their usage of the tutorials and how they found out about the website. There will also be 15 other questions based on a 5-point Likert scale, 5 being strongly agree, and 1 being strongly disagree.

v  These questions will monitor how useful the individual found the tutorials to be in regards to the purpose of their usage, and to what extent they would recommend the tutorial to other individuals.

            The study would also research how useful the Khan Academy tutorials were in and out of the classroom. This would involve 30 different schools across the United States and would include students from various types of undergraduate postsecondary schools: Ivy League colleges, public and private colleges, universities, community colleges, and career/technical/vocational/trade schools.

What would the administrators/professors do?

Researchers would ask professors of both traditional as well as online courses to incorporate at least 5 tutorials as part of their classrooms. They will also be asked to provide the website as a supplement tool for their course. The study will narrow in on a course that would be an introductory math or science class that the majority of institutions recommend of their students nationwide, for example CHEM 101. A pre- and post- evaluation will be administered to the students at the beginning and end of the term. The evaluation would include 10 questions regarding how useful the tutorials were in and outside the classroom, how often they used the supplement tutorials, and how well they perceived the tutorials to help or hinder their achievement in the course. Researchers will be sure to interview students who are enrolled in online and traditional courses using the traditional classroom as the control group, and the online classroom as the experimental group. This would be interesting to note because students in the experimental group are already use to not having a face-to-face interaction with a professor and it would be fascinating to note the difference in their perception of the effectiveness of Khan Academy in comparison to students in traditional classrooms.

            The study will also interview 50 school administrators and professors. The school administers and professors will be from the undergraduate schools that were asked to use Khan Academy in their classroom and had administered the pre- and post- evaluations. They will be asked 15 questions pertaining to the usefulness of the supplement tool, if they are willing to continue using it in future courses, how effective the tool was in the classroom, and if they saw an improvement in student performance from years past that did not use the supplement tool. This interview process will be very beneficial in order to see how administrators feel about the impact Khan Academy has on their students.

Hypothesis

H1: Benefits will yield Khan Academy as a strong supplement that is flexible and willing to allow students the advantage of being able to use the device on their own time. The ability to fast forward over the parts they already know and rewind to the parts that they need more emphasis on is a powerful advantage to the online tutorials.

H2: Disadvantages of Khan Academy include the dispute that online learning does not foster face-to-face interaction and keeps individuals from vocally expressing their thoughts and opinions in an interactive way.

H3: Rather than being a complete take-over in the classroom, more college classrooms will find themselves using the tutorials as a means for a supplement and incorporate it with a regular lesson but not completely eliminate face-to-face classroom interactions.

Literature Review

Existing research studies

Doris U Bolliger

1.      Data collected from this study included students enrolled in pre-service teacher course taught by different instructors

2.      The study examined the effects of learning styles on learner perceptions of the use of online tutorials

3.      It concluded that interactive demonstrations (tutorials) accommodated a variety of learning styles and met the needs of diverse learners

4.      Study focused on learning styles: visual, aural, kinesthetic, and read/write preferences

How this ties into my study

1.      Understanding that learning styles has very little effect on perception and comprehension is insightful to the types of students the tutorials will inquire and assist

2.      It also illustrates how vital catering to a variety of learning styles is for student retention

Wei-yuan et al

1.      This study was done on the campus of The Open University of Hong Kong (offers 199 online courses)

2.      The research explored the concern of students perceptions of courses with online tutorial supports

3.      The findings concluded that the majority of the outcomes were positive perceptions for using the Internet for distance learning

How this ties into my study

1.      The information gained from this study reinforces the advantages of flexibility and the ability for students to learn at their own pace on their own time

2.      The study also stresses the importance of a student’s ability to refer back and repeat parts they do not understand and fast forward through the sections that are already understood

Theoretical Media Frameworks

The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis: consists of the belief that information is not evenly distributed throughout society. People with higher socioeconomic status (SES) generally tend to have better ability to acquire information than individuals with lower socioeconomic status and thus this inequitable distribution creates a division between the two groups.

Those with a higher SES become better-educated individuals due to the accessibility to more resources and availability of information whereas those with a lower SES do not have the luxury of education as readily attainable. This difference creates the knowledge gap that continues to widen as the individuals progress. This theory can be applied with the consideration of numerous barriers.

Within this study specifically, the barrier of prior educational background is critical to examine. Students who visit Khan Academy and use the tool as a replacement rather than a supplement do not have the prior knowledge as readily available to them as a student who already understands the material and do not need supplement resources. The struggling student trying to keep their head above water may be using the website as a desperate attempt to understand exactly what the textbook and professor is not able to explain. With each passing day, the student who is unable to comprehend the lecture continues to fall behind because they are constantly trying to teach themselves the information that was discussed in class, waiting to complete the assignment because they need to ask the questions the following morning, and thus leading to a perpetual imbalance of knowledge. If students who already understand the core concepts were to visit Khan Academy, they could skip through the introductory materials and head straight to more advanced subjects.

Through my study, I want to examine how this gap can be used as a model not to alleviate the gap, but help the students with less resources have the tools to learn in an environment that does not make them feel condemned for not easily understanding concepts as quickly as their counterparts. In addressing the knowledge gap as a framework, it provides understanding that students are at different learning levels and providing online tutorials can alleviate the strain and embarrassment of students who need the extra help and the extra attention.

The Uses and Gratification Theory contends that different people can use the same mass communication message for very different purposes and users play an active role in choosing and using the media. The students who are using the website vastly vary in the reasons why they seek the intended tutorials. In trying to find the purpose of their usage is beneficial to understand in order to better cater to what students are having difficulty comprehending. In accordance to this, it is beneficial to examine in what ways they are able to more inefficiently grasp difficult information is vital to the understanding of students in general. The purpose of this study is to discover how Khan Academy is changing how students learn in and out of the classroom. By simply administering this study, students are being exposed to more resources to use and thus are given options to learning. Even if the study does not validate the notion of inclusion in the classroom, the subjects of the study have the means to access another tool to help with their studies and enrichment.

Through the 91 million views, it can clearly be seen that users are actively choosing this website in particular to help them with their learning. Through the usage of the uses and gratification theory, taking a step back to truly analyze why the site is so popular is something worth looking into. Clearly it is successful and a close content analysis of this websites affects is why surveying all Khan Academy users is just as important to examine.

Conclusion

Ø  Cycle of learning that includes giving a lecture, problem set, and then an exam is not effectively reaching students.

Ø  In the fast-paced and technological state that society currently finds itself in, this sequence of curriculum is arduous and extraneous. Students are lucky if they retain even 10% of what was “covered” in class. These are the students who understand what is going on in the classroom day to day.

Ø  What happens to the students who are not engaged? Who are not actively participating and asking questions? How do you even begin to remember something that you never truly understood? Salman Khan states that students “learn to fake understanding, not to think,” (2011).

The New Learning Renaissance

Ø  Khan Academy could be the new medium in which learning could become more interactive and inclusive for different learning styles.

Ø  It has been said that Khan Academy, “holds the promise of [being] a virtual school: an educational transformation that de-emphasizes the classrooms, campus and administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors,” (Kaplan 2010).

Ø  Another option to this is “flipping the classroom” in which students view the tutorials in place of lectures outside of the classroom while doing assignments during time that would be originally meant for instruction in the classroom. This “flipping” provides more time for students to monitor and record what exactly they did not understand and come back to the instructor with questions. This model enhances engagement and provides more hands on opportunities that otherwise would be filled with tedious lectures that could make little sense to many.

o   For more information on how to try and implement this in your classroom, try reading this article, it is very useful!

How Khan Academy is Changing the Rules of Education

Purpose of my research:

           

ü  This research study aims to target those students who are struggling in their classes and help them succeed. In trying to answer the questions regarding Khan Academy, this research study is different in that it does not only look at the tutorials themselves nor the variable of students using them alone.

ü  This study looks at how exactly students are using online tutorials as a medium to increase their achievement, how this achievement can be increased for everyone to benefit, and if in fact distance learning is more effective, how do researchers include administrators to continually use the tutorials regularly so they can become mainstream.

ü  The focus is not on accessibility, but on the actual factors that hinder children from learning and how tutorials are able to fill in those gaps is an important difference that this study aims to discover. What, if at all, is it about Khan Academy’s tutorials that these learners are gravitating to? If it is receiving 91 million views and roughly 200,000 views daily, why are educators not using this in the classroom or at least providing it as a supplement resource for their students? These are questions that can be answered through this study.

What are the possible outcomes if I actually did implement this study?

ü  By examining the 3,000 questionnaires from Khan Academy users, 3,000 pre- and post- evaluations, as well as the 50 interviews, I think that the results will be stunning. Researchers would likely agree that Khan Academy is a strong supplement that is flexible and extremely beneficial for students to use outside of the classroom.

ü  By giving students this resource, it allows students to strengthen their comprehension outside of the classroom which allocates more time in the classroom devoted to application of that knowledge.

ü  The tutorials also provide students with a device in which they are able to use on their own time as well. They are able to fast forward over the parts they already know and rewind to the parts that they need more emphasis on.

ü  A disadvantage of using the online tutorials is that it does not foster face-to-face interaction and keeps individuals from vocally expressing their thoughts and opinions in an interactive way. Rather than being a complete take-over in the classroom, more college classrooms will find themselves using the tutorials as a means for a supplement and incorporate it with a regular lesson but not completely eliminate face-to-face classroom interactions.

What about them critics?

ü  There are various arguments against Khan Academy replacing part of the classroom. As mentioned, this new type of learning raises the question of necessity for interactive face-to-face interactions. The argument of students needing to ask question of a live professor can be easily refuted. Reality is that the majorities of students are too self-conscious to raise their hands in class. Many would much rather email the professor their concerns. Of course there are exceptions to this, and for that, if Khan Academy were to be used as a type of online course, more complex questions could be answered through conference chats or other means of communication that is more immediate and less threatening or humiliating than speaking up in front of the class.

Some of the limitations:

Ø  The study is planned to be done over a period of one year: Khan Academy is still relatively new. In consideration to the fact that this site is still in the first decade of development, there must be a disclaimer explaining that there is still a lot of confusion and puzzlement in regard to what to do with this new technology.

Ø  If there was time for further analysis, I would like to do a longitudinal study that may yield more information on how effective Khan Academy can become once educators are more willing and able to incorporate the website into their classrooms.

Ø  Another limitation includes the issue of accessibility and how it may become a factor. Although many college students have access to a computer lab on campus, they may not have the means to continually transport themselves to be able to obtain that accessibility.

Ø  Lastly, the consideration of the sleeper effect must be taken into consideration. This theory contends that there is an increase in opinion change and significant increase in attitude over time after exposure. This could entail that students do in fact learn more than they initially recognized and the information retained is much more substantial than what is perceived to be readily available.

Works Cited

Bolliger, Doris U., and Supawan Supanakorn. “Learning Styles and Student Perceptions of the Use of Interactive Online Tutorials.” British Journal of Education Technology 42.3 (2011): 470-481. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.

Geuss, Megan. “Go Back to School on the Web.” PCWorld.htm. PCWorld Communications, Inc., 30 Oct. 2001. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.

Kaplan, David A. "Bill Gates' Favorite Teacher." Fortune 162.4 (2010): 71-73. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.

Khan Salman. "Youtube U. Beats Yousnooze U." Chronicle Of Higher Education 57.11 (2010): B36-B38. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.

Thompson, Clive. “How Khan Academy is Changing the Rules of Education.” Wired.com. Condé Nast Digital., 15 July. 2011. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.

Wei-yuan, Zhang, Kirk Perris, and Lesley Yeung. "Online Tutorial Support In Open And Distance Learning: Students’ Perceptions." British Journal Of Educational Technology 36.5 (2005): 789-804. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.