Slashdot Mirror
Khan Academy Seeks Patent On Education A/B Testing
theodp writes: The Education Revolution will be patented. USPTO records show that Khan Academy is seeking a patent for Systems and Methods for Split Testing Educational Videos. From the patent application: "Systems and methods are provided for comparing different videos pertaining to a topic. Two different versions of an educational video may be compared using split comparison testing. A set of questions may be provided along with each video about the topic taught in the video. Users may view one of the videos and answer the questions. Data about the user responses may be aggregated and used to determine which video more effectively conveys information to the viewer based on the question responses." Now it's up to the USPTO to decide if something like the test and control studies conducted 40+ years ago (pdf) by the PLATO system to measure the effectiveness of different teaching methods would count as prior art. In response to an earlier post on Khan Academy's pending patents on learning computer programming and 'social programming,' Slashdot user Khan Academy said that the nonprofit is using patents for good, so not to worry.
Most education majors are aware of that despite the fact that A/B testing is ubiquitous, it lacks serious reliability and/or validity as a serious methodology for evaluating teaching techniques or evaluation models for those techniques. It's a sad comment on the state of online training that most methodologies end up being evaluated in this fashion. Teachers use A/B testing because it's quick and easy as a way of putting some kind of data point in a teaching or evaluation process; it's time for online training to understand this and work to rise above such primitively approaches in creating new teaching techniques involving the increasing use of technology. It's only in this way that online education can truly compete with conventional education practices.