Next On Deck For Khan Academy: Better Diagnostics And Internationalization

Even though Sal Khan is now running a platform that serves 6 million students and people a month, he’s still churning out a couple videos a week. What’s been most recently on deck? World War I. To make a video, Khan says he’ll front-load several books worth of reading on everything from the Armistice Day to the sinking of the Lusitania. Then he’ll start to make videos once he feels he has a decent grasp on the subject material. “If I’m hanging out waiting for the dentist, I’ll just start reading something about World War I,” he said in a recent interview. From the original tutoring calls he’d arrange to help out relatives, to the initial YouTube channel he started, Khan Academy has grown to reach 75 million users to date, with 230 million lessons delivered and 1 billion problems answered in 30,000 classrooms throughout the world. Naturally, there’s been quite a bit of hype (with both its good and bad consequences). Khan Academy has the reach but it’s still proving out the data to show that its lessons measurably affect learning outcomes beyond the handful of pilots the non-profit has tried. “Teachers are rightfully skeptical, I think. They’re overworked. They have a million things to do,” Khan said. “It’s an incredibly tiring job and you’re throwing a new thing at them, even if they intellectually recognize the benefit of it.” Two of the top things on Khan’s priority list for the next fall are internationalization and diagnostics. The Khan Academy has pioneered ways of measuring progress, to help ensure that students don’t develop a “Swiss Cheese”-like base of knowledge with different weak areas. But he acknowledged the site isn’t as good at telling students where they should begin. What if they’re competent at certain things like logarithms but terribly behind in trigonometry? “One of the biggest complaints we get is that people don’t know where to start. By this August, we should have good diagnostics where people can figure out where they stand,” he said. He’s personally interested in Carol Dweck’s theories around fostering a growth-centered mentality in children and students. Her research is the basis for a series of media stories and discussions around how much you should praise children and whether you should attribute their success to persistence or innate capabilities. She’s found that children who internalize not innate talent, but rather diligence, tend to do better

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