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Interviews: Ask Lead Developer Ben Kamens About Khan Academy
Ben Kamens spent over 5 years at Fog Creek, eventually working his way up to VP of engineering. However, after watching one of Salman Khan's talks he started to volunteer his time at Khan Academy, and is now the lead developer. In-between providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere, he's graciously agreed to answer some of your questions. As usual, ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Joel Spolsky has famously stated that he prefers software engineers who come from highly accredited universities, preferably Ivy-league. His thought is that one has to distinguish oneself in order to be granted admission to such places. Do you think that Joel's opinion, and those of other elitist employers, will change with the introduction of free, quality online education?
As somebody who works in the educational workspace providing information management services to schools, I would be fascinated in your take on the Learning Registry's potential for making low cost content available to teachers/students.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
We've seen a lot of these "post your questions" topics, but hardly any answers lately. When will we start seeing responses?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Lead dev, eh? I'm betting you sit in on lots of spec definition meetings. Maybe with The Man himself. Does he give informal presentations just like the real lectures or ? Feel free to lie if the answer would get you fired. Hmm maybe this question sucks.
Ah F it that was dumb lets ask something more realistic. I always ask coder/tech types whats their coolest hack / coolest piece of code. Not something else someone else did, not some giant overall project or vague thing like "world peace" just your coolest isolated to one individual "thing" hack. Something they did personally not hired someone else to do, or something their boss did. Maybe in your LOB its an amazing caching technique, or an astounding way to compress video or whatever. Or some astounding workflow thingy. A short story just a paragraph no more. The kind of thing a /. audience would respond with "cool!" when they read it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I've heard that KhanAcademy has a platform for schools. Students can learn using Khan Academy and teachers can monitor their progress and help students where they need it most. When I last heard about this the platform was a pilot program being launched at select schools. Are there plans to make this platform generally available? or even open source?
Do you pick up your cellphone and scream "KHHHAAAAANNNN!!!!" into it?
It seems to me that the problem with online education is being able to prove what you have learned. I can learn Calculus online at Khan Academy or at my local community college. I'll probably learn Calculus better at Khan Academy and for less money. But, I cannot use that knowledge to get a degree nor would I have any other way of proving my knowledge to other schools or potential employers. Do you have a solution to this problem?
I find the idea of having ebooks for free and then K-12 kids getting an ereader for saving the school district money. Expanding this, I feel edutainment was never done right and could be explored again. Finally if some professors do their lecture once, they wouldn't have to do it again stored in video format.
I think the notion of going from paid books to free content is noble, and I'd be willing to work for well below a standard software engineer salary. How can I get in contact with you to possibly get employment?
God spoke to me
I'll pay you 30% of the royalties my free content makes. That goes for anyone else reading too.
Not one single "Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!" joke?!
Not one?!
You are a disappoint Slashdotters!
Where are all the "traditional" Computer Science courses? I'm not asking about the "interactive manual" type courses like how to do loops in Python - there are a ton of materials about that all over the web. I'm asking about theoretical computer science, such as Turing completeness, Chomsky hierarchy, abstract data types, compiler design, that kind of stuff which is the backbone of a university computer science education.
The reason I'm asking is not to diminish the value of hands-on courses, but because many (including myself) were not able to get a "traditional" CS degree, coming into programming jobs from other disciplines (or no degree at all) and are largely self taught. Self teaching is great when it comes to practical stuff early on, but once you move on to more senior roles you start feeling the gaps of not understanding the theory behind your tools, design, and implementation, as much as you should.
As Khan Academy, at least in my exposure to it, is about listening to someone talk watching writing on a board, do you think that this is teaching good pedagogy? Do you think it reinforces the idea that visual learners are the smartest people, the people who deserve to be educated? Is there any plans to expand the current format ot include other learning styles. For instance, I am not one of those that thinks manipulative have to be used in math, but I do think a math classroom with no manipulative is not as reaching to as broed a learner base as it could be. Or having an interactive element where a formative assessment might be conducted during the video?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Huginn_and_Muninn... Lets give the Norse gods some props.
I'm a middle school teacher experimenting with using KA with my classes. I think it is an amazing tool, especially for differentiation -- helping teachers to help their students who are behind have successes in math and, ideally, work towards getting caught back up to their peers. I think it can allow math teachers to do more interesting and fun (non-drill) types of work in the classroom, such as focusing more on students learning by doing open-ended, authentic, rich projects with each other.
The key word there is that I *think* it must be helpful to the type of classroom described above. I want to know it is, and as part of our practice in Ontario, Canada, it is encouraged that teachers engage in personal inquiry projects to get more data on whether what we think is working actually is. It is difficult to get the data I need out of KA. We're having to do a lot of manual grabbing of student usage times and populating spreadsheets with that. Any plans to extend the external API to allow more sophisticated queries? Or, perhaps plans to provide a tool allowing more extensive data dumps which researchers can use?
And if you don't have plans at the moment, does this post influence that? ;-) With a more thorough access to student data, I expect there will be researchers who will be more interested in investigating KA in their research and fleshing out the actual benefits (and also any issues that might be addressed).
My students and I thank you!
(mr.walker at walker-clan dot com)
I've heard a criticism of the Khan Academy pedagogic approach is that it is explanation based (effectively the old model: the teacher talks, the student listens, the student carries out an exercise, listens again) - while schools are moving towards exploration based learning (where students are encourage to try and approach problems from different angles supported by teacher-as-facilitator).
To what extent does Khan Academy replicate a very old fashioned rote-learning form of education (albeit delivered and presented via a new media with minor improvements like pause and rewind), and in what aspects does it offer significant new pedagogical advances in learning?
(in your view) have on the cost of a four year degree in the next 20 years? I am not speaking directly in context of Khan academy - but online courses in general at universities - as well.
Traditionally, the cost of a course is divided between the limited physically present students. With the advent of online universities and courses, that cost can be divided across students across many geographical boundaries. A student in his parent's basement in Malawi could theoretically take a Political Science course at Stanford. This has many advantages:
a) Universities can educate more students per semester per course - so they bring in more revenue.
b) Students don't have to pay for room and board - so it reduces the direct burden on the students.
c) Deserving students can take courses without having to go through the hell of getting a US visa.
For degrees (like Computer Science) that don't need much laboratory work (that you need to be physically present for), it seems to me that the cost of education should actually start to come down drastically with online courses - but I know I am missing something and big education is going to work hard to keep the fees up.
How do you know how effective your programs are? How do you calibrate your presentations? How do you accommodate different learning styles?
I ask because most of the methods that rate teaching effectiveness is thin. That is, “Does New Math work better then drilling students?” “Does this video work for dyslexia students?” etc.
I have seen may teachers guided by antidotal evidence or heuristic rules – which makes sense because you need to evaluate students taught by thousands of teachers - each who have their individual style.
It would seem to me that you would have a vast trove of data to pull out – and validate – how effective your courses are.
One of the big things about Khan and other massive online course systems is videos. Yes, videos. E.g. I once saw this 5 minute video explaining why dividing anything by zero was not defined. Rather than, plus infinity. I summarized it as:
OK, so the question is: why videos? You are cutting off most of the world's population who do not have access to decent Internet and thus can't download and watch all these videos. If you provided text (even if just a transcript along with some screenshots where necessary) you would be able to reach a much bigger audience, including those who could benefit most.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
while schools are moving towards exploration based learning
Where's that? I know everyone doesn't live in the US, but there, schools are actually focusing more and more on rote memorization thanks to the government mandating that students take numerous lousy standardized tests...
As someone who is currently a senior in computer science and looking for summer internships, what is it that Khan Academy developers look for in perspective interns? I've looked over the blog posts from some of the past interns, and their projects all seem pretty amazing. Is it possible for someone who doesn't have a fair amount of professional level experience to jump in to the internship program with Khan Academy? Disclaimer: I currently have an application in for the internship program, hence my curiosity :)
Does the academy's curriculum include (or plan to include) courses on advanced genetic engineering, cryogenics or advanced political science?
I've rummaged a bit through the sources presented on https://github.com/Khan and I could not find the source for the actual website.
How do you plan to implement support for I18N in the exercises ?
Apropos of this, a number of MOOCs -- don't know if Khan is doing this as well -- are engaging in experimentatl partnerships with degree-granting institutions for hybrid courses where the MOOC is a central component of the combined course, but there is a live component and exams as well.
Hi Ben, thank you for doing this. A while ago Sal mentioned the possibility of doing a grammar video series and creating modules to help students practice and master the concepts. Is this still being worked on or has it taken a back seat? If a back seat, to what? I feel that a lot of the educational websites (KA, Udacity, Coursera, etc) focus on math/programming/science and the humanities have been *somewhat* neglected. Thanks for teaching me linear algebra!
Hi there,
We education developers often have to solve novel problems, particularly with respect to assessment. For instance, a number of good questions might be asked and answered by observing the duration, replays and other data (such as the time when a person stops to view) about video.
I wonder what kinds of educational / assessment observation challenges you've had to solve technically, and what the education developer community might learn, write-large, by your progress (or struggle therein)?
Thanks & keep up the great work,
--DC
Should we cut degree into smaller chucks?
That are a better fit for people who want to learn but don't have the time / funds for a full time college?
Can make tech / trades schools have more meaning and not be roped into the older degree system.
Fix the skills gaps issues
Let people who learn betting by working hands on get something out of it.
Get people in the armed forces something to to say that they can do X job with out having to go to school for a full 2-4+ years to get a piece of paper saying the same thing?
I imagine Sal probably rues the day that movie was made.
I highly doubt that. Everyone thinks that moment was awesome, and his acting was awesome in it. Given that one goal of being an actor is to be well known, how could you rue being part of one of the most iconic moments in film history?
And again, it's not like people thought it was funny/bad, most thought it was awesome. Even though it's similar it's pretty much diametrically opposed in recognition and effect than the "NOOOOOOOOOO" moment in Star Wars EP3. That would be something to rue...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Discussions about online learning tend to remind me of the book "Jude the Obscure," by Thomas Hardy. It's been a couple of decades, but from what I remember it's the tragic story of a poor working man who dreams of pursuing education/knowledge but who can only barely scrape by with the essentials and can rarely afford even the occasional book. Do institutions like Khan Academy mostly or completely erase that scenario in the modern day? Would a modern Jude have been able to educate and better himself? Are there other obstacles that replace the cost as a barrier to taking this free learning and finding advancement or satisfaction?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Is the software going to be open sourced or available for free? I could use some of its features in a slightly different context.
Fundamental programming methodologies, such as Test Driven Development, seeming to be increasing in popularity. To what extent does Khan Academy teach any form of fundamental software development methodology, and why?
For example the UK, where there's growing interesting in enquiry based learning - this links to a report by Ofsted, the government's "Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills".Enquiry learning (called inquiry learning in the USA) also has its champions in North America (e.g. Roy Pea). A quick look around suggests that this approach also has been tried with success in Scandinavia( "Context of teaching and learning school science in Finland: Reflections on PISA 2006 results" by Lavonen and Laaksonen).
I've heard a criticism of the Khan Academy pedagogic approach is that it is explanation based (effectively the old model: the teacher talks, the student listens, the student carries out an exercise, listens again) - while schools are moving towards exploration based learning (where students are encourage to try and approach problems from different angles supported by teacher-as-facilitator).
To what extent does Khan Academy replicate a very old fashioned rote-learning form of education (albeit delivered and presented via a new media with minor improvements like pause and rewind), and in what aspects does it offer significant new pedagogical advances in learning?
The question you need to ask yourself first is what form of education is better? I have no motivation, no interests and a rebellious personality. Without proper education i'd be a bum, criminal or cimbination of both instead of a systems administrator at a decent company.
... It sure didn't work for you!
I hate videos for that very reason. Why should I spend time watching a guy talk when I can absorb the same information at least 5 times faster by using that lovely, centuries old information compression method, called 'reading text'?
Bugged me in the couple online courses I did, until I figured out I could just look at the powerpoint or whatever the guy was using as the visual aid, and only zoom in on the video for the bits where that wasn't in itself clear enough.
Why is it that a bug accepted in 2010, and which received a lot of comments from others with the same problem, is still not acted upon? Is it lack of resources?
Disclaimer: I filled this bug report.
What improvements can you bring to the table for non-science education? I.e. how do you make a ethics or civics course better?