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Khan Academy's learning experience

The Pedagogy Behind Khan Academy

Where pedagogy meets technology

At Khan Academy, our success is defined by the success of our learners and educators.
Pedagogical expertise informs and inspires our product, which is built to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
What does a Khan Academy learning experience look like?
1. Personalisation
When it comes to personalization, there are a few things that are really important.
  • First is that there is the right content for every student, and that might not be the same content for all students in your class. And we at Khan Academy can help personalize that content, but at the end of the day, it is the teacher who is going to be most effective in personalizing the content using Khan Academy.
  • And second, it's self-paced so if a student needs more practice on a given topic, it’s there. It’s about every student getting to remediate (keep trying till you get it) if necessary or accelerate (learn advanced concepts) if they can.
This means
Current pedagogyKhan pedagogy
All students move togetherEach student moves at his/ her own pace
Students get to know progress at the end of the exam/testStudents get instant feedback and can keep moving up difficulty levels
Teachers assign content to the class as a wholeTeachers can assign things to individual students, not just full class
2. Mastery Learning
Mastery-based learning may sound very difficult but it’s a very simple principle. Mastery-based means students should move to the next topic only when they have mastered the previous topics.
This means
Current pedagogyKhan pedagogy
Teachers get to know the progress at the end of the exam/ testThrough our Mastery reports, teachers get to know the student’s individual strengths & weaknesses more frequently
Students get to assess their capability at a point in time (through exams or tests)Students can do frequent assessment on their capability on a topic/ subject and can keep going back to it till they reach the right level (multiple attempts)
Students tend to move to the next topic without full comprehension of previous topicStudents are encouraged to master a topic before moving on to the next one
Encourages students to finish everything in defined time frameEncourages students to finish everything with right quality at their own pace
3. Transform Students’ Mindsets to a Growth Mindset
When we think of a student mindset, both for ourselves and for our students, it’s important that the student strongly believes in their own potential (“I can learn anything” mindset).
Our platform encourages this mindset by:
  • Providing content and ready support at hand at all times to a student so that the student never feels alone in the learning process.
  • Provide ready help to students when they are stuck on a particular problem/topic. The platform has sections that help the student feel that it's perfectly normal to not get a full understanding of the topics at the first instance. Right below every exercise, we have a section "Are you stuck? Get help." There are multiple ways you might need help. You maybe need a hint, you may need to watch a video, you might need to ask your teacher but by going through that process you figure out when the right time is to use each of those strategies.
  • Providing encouragement on whether you're getting problems right or wrong that reinforces the message that it's the effort that counts.

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