October 23, 2013

Khan Academy Adds Automated Tutoring Service

Summary: Khan Academy, a popular site that features free educational videos and resources, has recently added a personal tutor capability that helps students figure out where to start their lessons and to know when they truly understand the concepts. Students start with a knowledge map for the subject, currently limited to math, that is built from an adaptive pre-test. As the student demonstrates understanding the system moves them through successive levels, presenting supplementary videos to clarify confusing concepts. “Mastery challenges,” allow students to show how well they can recall and apply what they’ve learned in a mixed group of questions that cross multiple skills.

By Dian Schaffhauser, originally published in T.H.E. Journal on 9/26/13

Khan Academy, the site that features free educational videos and resources for use by anybody, has just added a personal tutor capability that helps students figure out where to start their lessons and to know when they truly understand the concepts. The “learning flow,” as it’s referred to by Founder Sal Khan in a video about the new functionality, is currently available for math; additional subjects will be added “soon.”

The development of learning flow, according to Khan, grew out of feedback from Academy students who “didn’t know where to start. They didn’t know what level was appropriate for them.”

Once a student has set up a free account in the service and logged into a personal homepage, he or she will see a “mission,” a condensed knowledge map that shows a box with tiny tiles in it, each tile representing a new skill to be learned. For example, the “world of math” mission includes 482 boxes. They start out gray. As the student shows understanding, the tiles begin to be filled in blue; the deeper the blue, the more the student has proved understanding of that skill. Eventually, missions will be offered that align to grade level, preparing for a test, or performing some type of project. They’ll also be offered for other subjects besides math.

To use the learning flow, the student starts with a pre-test that’s adaptive. As he or she answers questions or chooses “I haven’t learned this yet,” software in the background performs an on-going analysis and presents easier or harder questions as the test progresses.

To read more click here.

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