Khan Academy

The development of successful educational games that can help millions of students around the world enjoy learning has been my hope and dream for at least 8 years now. I have always known that technology would bring so many advantages to education and that it is inevitable that this education revolution will come, well today I am glad to inform you that this revolution is here, the name: Khan Academy.

If you are:
a) A game developer, or
b) A person that has ever struggled with a subject at school, or
c) A human being

then I ask for the next 10 min to show you the future.


Let's start with a quick little video from the mastermind himself, Sal Kahn



So what is Kahn Academy?
KhanAcademy.org is an online system that provides thousands of short 10 min videos about almost any subject you can think of, and when I say think of I mean it. Anywhere from basic math, to calculus to the French Revolution you can sit down and learn about them thanks to the knowledge of Mr. Sal Kahn.


How would this help Education?
Khan has set up a wonderful system called the Knowledge Map as seen below:

As you can see there are a bunch of little squares, each square is a valuable piece of knowledge, At the very top you find your first task, Basic Addition (1+1, 2+3), then once you have learned that concept and successfully mastered it by answering questions you "Unlock" new subjects that build upon what you just succeeded.

It is obvious that to learn algebra you must already know how to add, multiply, divide and subtract, but the problem with today's education is that kids are forced to follow a strict curriculum, so if they don't learn something, then they are left behind. With this system you practice a subject until you become proficient and confident with it.
This not only allows you to learn at your own pace but it provides you with a completely solid knowledge base.

How do I know I am proficient at a subject?

After watching the video of that section you move on to the practice screen, here you will be asked questions about what you just learned, and it will track your answers. In order for you to be considered proficient on a subject you must answer 10 questions correctly in a row. There are no timers and no limit to how many problems you can take. The idea here is that you work at your own pace, you try and answer some questions, if you struggle, then perhaps go back and re-watch the lesson video. Here is a screenshot of the Practice section:

As you may have noticed there are several cool features here, below the tittle of the module there are the links to the videos that help you if you struggle with this practice, there is also the streak counter, once this fills up you are given a proficiency badge and you can move on.
But perhaps the coolest feature is the hint button, this will help guide you by showing you how to solve the problem, not just give you the answer but show you all the steps.


Why do you call this an Educational Game?

The starting point of this project was just a series of videos to help tutor kids on several subjects, therefore no interactivity was required, but as years go by, we can certainly notice that Mr.Khan has been attempting to "Gamify" the system. From the Knowledge tree you can see some of the things he is attempting, giving away badges for succesfully becoming profecient at a subject, awarding badges (Achivements) for answering many questions in a row, or with a really quick response.

These are the set of badges I have earned as of this moment:


I should definitely also mention the statistics system, Thanks to computer algorithms and databases, the academy will store all your answers, your complete progress and it will help you realize topics you might be struggling with here is an example of a student taken from one of the videos:

Isn't this wonderful? look at that much data, as a teacher, parent or even yourself, this type of statistics can really motivate you to keep learning, look at how this student answered several questions incorrectly, then watched some videos, and kept trying until he achieved the goal.

Now between stats, Databases, Achievement Systems and Computer Algorithms to help solve problems, there is definitely some "Gamification" going on, but here is where I put on my Game Developer Hat (it is actually always on) and think that as a game development community we should step up and provide as much suggestions as possible, We know how to entertain, attract and engage our users, what game elements can we add to this system to make it even more awesome?

I am anxiously awaiting the replies to this ultimate Game Design Challenge.


Conclusions

This is by far the most excited I have been about the future of education in my life. I can feel the potential of this. Perhaps the one thing that gives me most confidence is that this is free, a man has spent 5 years of his life doing this for the world, there has to be some great value there.
Now I do have some questions about the educational effectiveness of this program, that I guess only time and statistics will help us out, but here they are:

1) How good is the retention level, what would happen if all of the sudden there where surprise practice sessions on old topics, would students be as proficient? There is the chance that most of the things are getting stuck on short term memory so passing the subjects became a memory challenge (but I doubt this is true)

2 ) How do you integrate this to a classroom, can you just base your curriculum on this system?

3) How to motivate students to join this system?


Thank you very much for your time, I really hope that you are as excited as I am for the future of education, but I would ask for one thing, never take someones word for granted, check out the Khan academy, try a couple of courses yourself, ask you kids, brothers, parents to try it, let's see how effective this can be.