Khanacademy and Flipped Classroom- Analysis of Benefits and Shortcomings

Sal Khan at Web 2.0 Summit (Photo credit: Kevin Krejci)

There’s a lot of confusion and controversy surrounding the use and implementation of the Khanacademy and the Flipped Classroom model. This post is an humble attempt to put to rest from a neutral and objective standpoint by talking about the pros and cons.


Before we go ahead, a little bit of history. Sal Khan originally started out helping out his cousins with their Math problems by making Youtube videos. Over the years the collection has grown to over 3300 videos. This is the original Khanacademy. As far as teaching is concerned, this isn’t the best part. Because, there has been a lot of criticism regarding Khan’s use of ‘chalk and talk ’ to explain and demonstrate.


What Sal Khan made possible after creating the videos is the real paradigm shift. Khan has essentially created an entire learning ecosystem by doing the following things-

• Creating interactive practice exercises for every video using badges for motivation

• An analytics dashboard for teachers to track the real time progress of their students’ practice.

Before getting into the issues surrounding Flipped Classroom lets understand what the Khanacademy learning ecosystem can do on its own-

Image via CrunchBase

• It has over 3300 videos based on Math and Science concepts neatly arranged and can cater to a beginner to the most advanced student.

• It allows the student to understand concepts through video and the ability to rewind and understand exactly the portions they haven’t mastered yet.

• Once the students understand the Math concepts, Khanacademy encourages the student to try it out using practice exercises.

• Teacher can selectively identify the weak student and either a good student to help or can intervene themselves- all thanks to a real-time analytics dashboard provided everybody in the class is logged in through an internet connection.

Flipping The Class

Khanacademy also encourages teachers to ‘Flip the Classroom’ i.e allow students to watch lecture videos at home and then do the actual practice in the class. If all students actually do so, learning will truly become a 24/7 activity and can be taken outside the classroom without the help of parents, individual tutoring, group study etc. This is where I believe Khanacademy’s badges system and gamification model helps because it encourages students to prove to their peers and the teacher how good they are by getting an official endorsement from Sal Khan himself!

Bug Report screenshot for Khan Academy (Photo credit: syvwlch)

There is a criticism that Khanacademy encourages gamification of learning i.e. it encourages students to go after badges without really getting to know the concepts first. If teachers have such apprehensions, they can cross-check the ‘virtual student progress’ with a real paper and pencil test and Math problems designed by themselves and then check if there’s a discrepancy between the student’s real and ‘virtual’ progress. If we believe the main goal of education is to make students into independent learners through a process of self-discovery, Khanacademy is truly a blessing as it’s also free of cost.

In fact Sal Khan plans to add an additional layer of online forum like interactivity to Khanacademy by making it possible for other students or teachers or experts to interact, tutor and solve difficult problems. For example, if I’m a teacher and find out that some student is stuck with a trigonometry problem which I think is pretty easy, I could contact the students via skype or Google Hangout or simply type the solution to their query. Again, Sal Khan could decide on a badge system for expert contributers, essentially creating an 24.7 free, open source ecosystem of learning similar to the wikipedia model.


Solving The Access Problem

School children in Tamil Nadu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There’s no real relationship between Khanacademy and the Flipped Classroom. Khanacademy is primarily an educational video lecture resource. It is also a web-based analytics tool to implement the ‘Flipped Classroom’ allowing teachers to track student progress and most importantly for students to practice their learning and understanding of the lesson over and over until they have mastered it.

What if you do not have a fully-equipped wifi enabled classroom, you will not be able to use the Khanacademy resources or use the ‘Flipped Classroom’ concept? In other words, both the video lectures and the ‘flipped classroom’ can be adapted to any situation or scenario. I’ve explained details of how to flip a class without the internet using just mobile phones.


What Khanacademy is not and cannot do?

• Khanacademy is not a replacement for teachers or classroom learning. Infact Khanacademy encourages active involvement of teachers.

• The Khanacademy model of Flipped Classroom frees up time for teachers who can encourage higher level cognitive tasks as recommended by Bloom’s Taxonomy, say a student project for example. However, if the teacher does not have the ability, the expertise the or passion to engage students in higher level cognitive tasks and challenges, the ‘Flipped Classroom’ will merely be limited for classroom practice.

• Khanacademy is not the only way to teach. There are several alternatives to Khanacademy’s ‘chalk and talk’ educational videos on Youtube which you could encourage your students to watch. Or you could create your own video and ask your students to watch.

• ‘Flipped Classroom’ is a technique for freeing up precious classroom time. You do not have to use Khanacademy to get the benefit of it. For example, if your school does not have internet in the classroom you will not be able to track student progress. You could still ask students to watch the relevant video at home and use the textbook problems for classroom practice .

To sum up, Khanacademy is a great way of enhancing the teaching-learning experience. It’s an excellent tool for home schoolers. It can even help passionate teachers do more complex learning. But it is not a replacement for the teachers. Although Khanacademy does a lot to free up classroom time, it cannot guarantee that teachers have the ability to do so unless they are passionate, have the expertise and want to take up the initiative.