Khan Academy: A Model for the World of Education

I always find it surprising how innovation — especially the more disruptive ones — arise from basic needs that the current system does not meet. The case of Khan Academy is one of them. Today, the number of minutes of videos watched per day on the platform averages 75 million. During the pandemic, the platform saw a 6× increase in teacher and student registrations. It was a lifeline when the directions of teaching seemed uncertain in the worst period of COVID-19.

But when the platform emerged in the late 2000s, it only wanted to serve a very specific purpose: how do you share knowledge with someone who is far away? By looking at this story, I want to demonstrate how an idea that seeks to break down an obstacle can change the face of education — and the marketplace.

Long-distance connection

Sal Khan was a hedge fund analyst when, in 2004, he started teaching unit conversion classes to his cousin. Sal lived in Boston and his cousin, Nadia, lived in New Orleans. The classes were taught over the phone, and the visual part of the content was transmitted via Yahoo! Doodle.

The methodology caught on, and soon Khan was teaching other relatives, who then spread the success to friends, and suddenly Khan could no longer attend to everyone and could no longer keep up with his work schedule. The problem was solved with a platform that was becoming popular around 2005, 2006: YouTube. Khan would leave recorded lessons for his students to watch later. The lessons became more and more popular.

In 2009, Khan quit his analyst job to dedicate himself full-time to Khan Academy. Starting the following year, foundations, companies, and individuals such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and Ann Doerr donated money to the initiative.

In 2012, Khan Academy arrived in Brazil through a partnership with the Lemann Foundation, which chose to emphasize math content for the national audience. According to the Foundation’s website, more than 2.6 million Brazilian students have already benefited from the platform’s videos, whose Portuguese subtitles are made available by the funding provided by the Lemann Foundation.

Impact

The numbers I cited here are a demonstration of the success of the initiative. But what is the difference between this method and other more traditional forms of education? For me, the answer is personalization.

Suppose you have difficulty with prime numbers. In your tests or in your exercises, it is precisely the questions with prime numbers that cause your grade or your grade to drop. In the traditional model, this information won’t do much good, because the material you are studying doesn’t change the content based on your personal difficulties.

With Khan, it does.

The platform’s learning system starts with a series of questions that will calibrate the questions and identify what you know. And then it will offer you inputs to work on the knowledge you still need to contribute. And this methodology can be used both in your personal learning and in the classroom. In fact, there is a very interesting account on the Room to Discover website about how one teacher brought the platform into the classroom, with great success. He states:

“My students began to feel less pressure to ‘do’ math and compete for grades. In fact, they began to enjoy the subject. As everyone found their level of knowledge, those who were having difficulty were given the support they needed to learn. Those who were bored with math started to feel challenged, seeking higher level challenges.”

And here is a personal testimony of mine: I have used Khan to reinforce my own son’s education at home and the results have been very fruitful. The gains are not only in terms of teaching, but of engagement of the child, who really gets involved with the digital content.

It is curious to think how all this brings together two contemporary realities: the transmission of knowledge at a distance and the need to transform educational models. And the current success of this platform shows how necessary it is to seek new solutions to these two issues — even more so under the specter of the new normal. It is no coincidence that, according to The Verge, those numbers I quoted above translate into an impressive percentage: the platform is now 300% more attended.