Listen to the talk by Salman Khan of Khan Academy at TED 2011 where he advocates using video to reinvent education. Brilliant stuff. Don't miss it.
Salman Khan describes how he got started, what they have been doing at Khan Academy using video, and brings out the following key insights in his talk.
- Self-paced learning can make a huge difference. Students prefer to learn by watching videos rather than learning face to face from a teacher. Videos offer students the ability to learn at their own pace from the comfort of their own homes, replay the videos any number of times, go back and replay videos of concepts that they want a refresher on and not be embarrassed to have to ask their teacher to repeat something many times.
- Rather than teach in class and assign homework to test the understanding, students can now learn at their own pace at home. Their understanding can be tested in class under the watchful eye of the teacher
- All of the tests can be administered online and the teacher can have access to all the usage and test data to to be able to diagnose and address the gaps in the students' understanding.
- The conventional model tests the understanding of students but doesn't insist on mastery. The teacher simply moves on to the next topic after administering a test and grading it even if there are gaps in the students' understanding. But now the students can be asked to master a topic before moving on to the next. Students can be encouraged to fail and the teacher is there to help students gain mastery. They will be asked to move on to the next topic only after achieving mastery on what they are currently working on. This ensures that there are no gaps in the students' understanding.
- Rather than the conventional approach of improving the student-teacher ratio to improve the learning outcomes, the metric we need to focus on is the student-to-valuable human time spent with the teacher ratio. This humanises the classroom experience and facilitates learning far better.
- Students who have gained mastery can help their peers who are yet to gain mastery. Since the Khan Academy model works over the Internet, this kind of peer-to-peer learning could happen between two people anywhere in the world. We could have a global one-world classroom.
Video is the killer app for education in the Indian context, since children learn best in their own native languages. Of all the Digital Learning Resources (DLR) or Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) we can use in improving learning, video is the most effective at least cost. Imagine the possibilities if we had a Khan Academy equivalent of thousands of videos in each of the Indian languages with the best teachers teaching each of the subjects. Every child in India will have access to these and can learn at his or her own pace.
There are multiple constituencies that can benefit from these videos.
- School children can now learn from the best teachers at their own pace, from the comfort of their homes.
- College students and those already in the workforce who may not have learnt their basics thoroughly in the past can now relearn whatever they want from the best teachers at their own pace and in privacy.
- Today's school teachers who may not be fully on top of their subject (due to lack of good teachers when they were in school/college) will now have the option of strengthening their understanding in the privacy of their homes, without any embarrassment.
- School teachers who may be thorough with their subject but not very good at teaching can now learn from the best teachers on how to help children learn by diagnosing and addressing the gaps in students' understanding.
- Parents can also learn the stuff that their own children are learning in school. As adults they will learn the stuff faster and also help their own children learn better. Parents need no more feel at sea when their children are learning stuff that they know nothing about.
With the imminent explosion in the number of screens (computers, tablets, mobile phones, and even the good old television) that will be accessible to children, all enabled for WiFi/3G/4G/DTH, videos would be an excellent way to make the best teachers accessible to every single child in India.
An organisation like the Azim Premji Foundation is ideally placed to do a Khan Academy in India, if they choose to do so.
