Can Anyone Catch Khan Academy?

waderoush writes "Even as name-brand universities like MIT and Harvard rush to put more courses on the Web, they're vying with an explosion of new online learning resources like Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, Dabble, Skillshare, and, of course, Khan Academy. With 3,200 videos on YouTube and 4 million unique visitors a month, Sal Khan's increasingly entertaining creation is the competitor that traditional universities need to beat if they want to have a role in inspiring the next generation of leaders and thinkers. Lately Khan's organization has been snapping up some of YouTube's most creative educational-video producers, including 'Doodling in Math Class' creator Vi Hart and Smarthistory founders Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Universities are investing millions in software for 'massive online open courses' or MOOCs, but unless they can figure out how to make their material fun as well as instructive, Khan may have an insurmountable lead." The Chronicle of Higher Education has a related article about the above-mentioned Coursera, and how they plan to make money off of free courses. A contract the company signed with the University of Michigan suggests they aren't quite sure yet.

Comments

Obligatory

[eternaldoctorwho]

Universities are investing millions in software for 'massive online open courses' or MOOCs, but unless they can figure out how to make their material fun as well as instructive, Khan may have an insurmountable lead.

Universities: KHAAAAAAAAAN!!!!

Re:Obligatory

[Deep Esophagus]

Missed opportunity: Should have titled this article "Catch Me If You Khan".

Degree

[AshFan]

How much weight does a Youtube degree carry in todays market?

Re:Degree

[Aqualung812]

I'm sick of that presumption. The point of education SHOULD be to become educated. Then, you use that education to do X work better than others without that education.

Instead, we treat it like a membership card into business. I fail to understand why so many MBAs hate unions when they refuse to hire someone without an MBA, thus creating their own union.

Re:Degree

[Anubis IV]

Accreditation and degrees carry weight because of what they mean. What does it mean if you say that you watched a few hundred YouTube videos and have the video history to back it up? Yes, you may have learned a lot from them, but how would anyone be able to tell that? Should they trust your word over the piece of paper another applicant has that says a recognized and trusted organization certifies that he learned that material?

Yes, it's a membership card, but it's a necessary one. In an ideal world, employers would be able to recognize skill, regardless of whether there's a piece of paper in the applicant's hand. We're not in an ideal world, however. Even if there were a perfect and not-too-burdensome way for employers to test the skills of applicants, most competent employers are willing to accept an otherwise-excellent applicant who is a bit rusty on some topics, since they understand that the applicant's prior experience and skills will allow them to pick it up again quickly. You can't test for that easily, and on the surface it doesn't look much different from not knowing the material at all. A degree is a decent indication that the person's claim to have learned the material is true. A YouTube video history is not.

That said, if there were someone with prior work experience (i.e. the other form of membership card) who hadn't gone through a university, I don't see why that would be problematic at all. But hiring someone on the basis of their claim that they learned the material from a series of videos? I don't doubt that people have done it, but it seems to me like a rather large risk, or else an expensive process to go through to test the veracity of their claims. Especially so in programming and the like, where a student who goes uncorrected in their bad habits is likely to have developed poor practices that will be difficult to correct.

Re:Degree

[Aqualung812]

I've been in the position of hiring, and degrees and accreditation are meaningless to me. Show me what you have done, for-profit or not.

If you spent the last 4 years of your life sitting in a classroom, getting drunk on Thursday-Saturday night, but didn't take the time to actually build something with the education you gained, chances are you're going to waste your workday by forming meetings, chatting with coworkers, and watching them do all of the work.

On the other end, with 20 years of IT work, I've had other companies refuse to even accept my resume when I tell them I don't have a 4-year degree. It is helpful, though, because I'd likely quit if surrounded by people like that.

I dropped out not because of bad grades, but because I was falling behind in the work I wanted to do (networking) during the school year, and then catching up while working a summer job related to my field. It only took two summers of that until I realized that it was pretty fucking stupid to PAY to fall behind for 8 months of the year and only GET PAID 3 months while actually learning.

I don't hold it against you if the best way for you to learn was through extra school. However, if all you have to show for your education is a piece of paper, get lost.

On a related note, this is why I really think a formal guild should exist for IT workers. NOT collective bargaining, but a system where an apprentice learns under a master in that field. The master vouches for the abilities of the apprentice, and after a few times of different masters vouching for them, they become a journeyman.

As someone hiring, it wouldn't take long to know that Master X's word was solid, and Master Y often approved jack-offs, so the system can be self-correcting.

Re:Degree

[Jeng]

Yes, spelling and grammar errors may distract from the matters at hand, but do they distract more than those who complain about them? Also grammar and spelling correctors tend to be very rude about it.

It's not like people are asking "Did you mean this or that? I can't tell from your post.". It is people saying "Hey, you dumbshit, you made a minor mistake in your post. I still understood what you meant, but you are dumb for making that mistake."

Re:Degree

[Anubis IV]

Kudos to you for taking the time to properly interview candidates.

I don't disagree with anything you said. I merely believe that most employers would be unwilling to spend so much time interviewing candidates who likely have a lower chance of being prepared for the challenges posed by the job. For every excellent applicant that taught themselves via an alternative method, you'll have dozens of slackers who claim to have done so but have not. And while I agree entirely regarding your assessment of college, at least it establishes something. You'll still have a disproportionate number of slackers, but the number should be lower, given that college at least imposes some requirements, whereas self-study does not.

As I said in my original comment, I do believe that if someone has prior work experience then it shouldn't matter where they got their skills. At that point, as you said, you can judge them on the basis of their prior work, but if they lack prior work experience, then I see no problems with an employer using the degree as a filter on their candidate pool. It's not perfect, but it does help to remove the part of the pool that is less likely to have the necessary skills.

Re:Catch?

[Chonnawonga]

Since when has education become a competition?

Since it became a business.

missing the point entirely

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been good textbooks for centuries. Watching a video is not going to improve things much. Online quizzes don't make people brilliant.

The first reason the top universities are at the top is their research output.

And the reason undergraduates excel at those top universities is that they spend almost every day for several years in contact with the people and resources which make that research possible. They go to tutorials. They chat through problems. They do extended lab work. They write extended pieces of work which are marked carefully by experts who can provide interactive feedback.

The Open University, the pioneering distance education factility in the UK which has several hundred thousand part-time and FTE students, has since 1969 provided more than all these supposedly "new" online education providers: custom textbooks tailored for learning with worked problems; a tutor who will mark your work and who you can contact whenever you want when you have a problem; several face-to-face tutorials throughout the year; possibly one or more residential schools; etc. Exams are all done in exam centres under exam conditions. Even then, it cannot hope to match the best red brick universities.

Khan knows how to market itself. It gives an opportunity to those dilettantes who don't know where else to find the information, online or offline. But it won't produce a new generation of leaders / top thinkers.

Re:missing the point entirely

[White Flame]

There have been good textbooks for centuries. Watching a video is not going to improve things much.

Oh yes it does. A conversational description of the material, as opposed to over-edited reference-worthy technical descriptions, can go a very long way in helping understanding. Seeing the interaction of somebody actually working through a problem and pointing things out (including their thought process), instead of a terse list of opaque steps, is huge. Along with the slides and downloads, all the reference material is still represented, but watching another human demonstrate the information is much often a faster and deeper way to communicate the same concepts. Not everybody can learn as well from just reading textbooks, even the good ones. Even if they can, going through a video lecture before reading the text seems to be a great way to make the reading far more meaningful, as familiarity has been bootstrapped.

There is merit to the other facets you describe, but lowering the cost and other barriers to entry to actual training (not just reference materials) is an amazing step forward.

Re:missing the point entirely

[del_diablo]

Text versus video? Irrelevant. The core problem with education is that either the teachers are not up to the standard, or the books are poorly written. And what is Khans academy doing? They are doing videos, but that is irrelevant in itself, what they are actually doing is to do a proper job at TEACHING their material, in contrast to many sources.
If you have a problem with Khan being video, then why don't you have a problem with subpar teaching in general?

Don't forget Teaching Company

[cpu6502]

I've been buying their product since the 90s when they were called "The Great Teachers" company. I took advantage of their once or twice-a-year sales to clear the warehouse. A customer can buy an entire course (~50 hours) for about the same cost as a month of cable. I learned more about history, language, philosophy from those audiocassettes than 5 years of actual college.

non-profit vs profit

[djbckr]

It really all comes down to this. Kahn Academy is non-profit, and is more interested in the public good. Everybody else that wants to get on this bandwagon simply can't compete with this, because they want money, and lots of it. Nobody else will be able to stop them.

Khan doesn't have much for advanced material

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of stuff being offered by traditional universities which is way above Khan's level. Khan is great for an introduction, and even a bit more, but that is all. For example, take a look at Stanford's Convex Optimization course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McLq1hEq3UY
Khan doesn't offer anything close to that. There's plenty of room for competitors to grow.

Re:Catch?

[cpu6502]

>>>became a business.

Which has been true since before recorded history. Education has always involved paying a tutor or lecturer to teach the younger generation, and thus the tutors were actually businessmen selling a service.

Khan Academy criticisms

[ebusinessmedia1]

Khan Academy is a great resource, but it's far from a perfect substitute if one want to accomplish deep learning. The fact is that there is a LOT of free and very helpful tutorial learning material on the Internet. Khan has caught a lot of interest because of the sheer scale that Sal Khan accomplished on his own. I think it's a great tool, but is becoming quite overrated in terms of what we know from those who teach face-to-face, and learning science.

Here are some valid criticisms of Khan Academy. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/07/03/the-trouble-with-khan-academy/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/khan-academy-and-the-effectiveness-of-science-videos/

In sum, Khan Academy is NOT a revolution in learning; it's a tool that many will use to help revolutionize education.

Re:Khan Academy criticisms

[aurizon]

Khan grows daily, and it quite capable of teaching high levels, even above the doctorate level.
Khan is a scattering of disparate modules, and quality varies.
It needs to be structured so that it can be learned standard courses in each discipline, on a term by term and year by year basis - albeit in far less time.
It also needs lab courses - youtube does fill the lab need, but not as well as a true lab, where fluids are poured and voltages measured and lab reports written and graded.
I can see a time where there is computer grading, with a secure ID, tied to IP address to give certificates of some kind. Machine certificates done by remote are still susceptible to hired ringers writing exams for people (which plagues real colleges too), the real world will demand real invigilated exams for each course before a complete course can be graded as passed and an aggregate of course completed as a year passed and three/four years = a degree. Once this is done, the entire degree will be able to compete in the hiring process.

I can see a process of maturation in the idea, but the idea of invigilated exams added to Khan will take a way to pay for this, since it goes beyond volunteer work (IMHO).

Five years from now, we will be amazed at how far they have come. I wonder if the brick and mortar colleges will try to kill the idea???