Before school starts, I spent the last few days powering through Salman Khan’s The One World Schoolhouse. Since I have been interested in education for a long time already, I found Khan’s book really interesting, and a lot of his points correspond with my views. To save you time, here is a summary of the main points that I thought are important. A more detailed personal analysis is found below.

Main Points

Self-paced learning
- It’s better to teach for mastery.
- And to gain mastery, it is not reasonable to rush students through a subject.
- The students should learn the topic by themselves.
Tackling knowledge gaps (Swiss Cheese)
- Without a strong foundation on a topic, students will have difficulty as they progress through a topic (like mathematics)
- Students must master each subtopic (near proficiency) before moving on to the next
Importance of intertextuality
- Context is very important in learning anything. Students need to see how they can apply what they’re learning.
- To build context, it is also important to relate what one is learning to 1) other subjects (e.g. math → physics) and 2) real life experiences
Attention spans and merit of youtube videos
- Our attention span is around 10 to 15 minutes.
- Because YouTube used to have a limit of 10 minutes, Khan’s videos were around that length. This turned out to be an accidental success because students are more engaged on shorter videos.
- It’s unnatural for students to passively sit and listen to hours and hours of lecture.
Flipped classrooms and active learning
- Flipped classroom models are very effective because they allow students to become more active
- In the meanwhile, teachers and professors also become more intimate with the students they are teaching
Apprenticeship and internship model of college
- In the past, doctors and lawyers used to have to apprentice with professionals before they can practice their profession (without college).
- This model can still be applied today. Instead of learning from textbooks, students can learn from professionals to see how their knowledge is being applied.
- They get to create projects that are valuable to the world instead of focusing on tests that would just be thrown away later.

Personal Experience As A Student

Self-paced learning

I really agree with this. In my own personal experience, I found that learning with the timeframe of the class is very limiting, especially in math classes. In some topics, I would understand it faster than others while in others, it would take me longer. The pressure to catch up tof the class completely drains my curiosity in the subject. I also do not have time to work out ways to understand the concept in my own way (e.g. visually).

Self-paced learning is good because it allows me to explore the topic at my own will. I can watch as many or little youtube videos on the topic as I would like.

The big downside to self-paced learning is that I might want to learn about something because I know it’s beneficial to me, but I would have no motivation or willpower to do it. For example, I know that A/B testing and the mathematics behind it is very important for me to know, but looking at the concepts made it very daunting. Without external pressure of time or peer pressure, I would have no motivation to learn the subject.

Therefore, it might work better on topics you are intrinsically motivated to learn about.

Tackling Knowledge Gaps

This is an obvious one because you cannot learn new knowledge without a firm understanding of the prerequisites. You would also need to relearn those things. But again, you may have already learned the prerequisites and got good scores on the final exam on those topics, but in the end, you still might not be able to remember what you’ve learned when you start a new topic.

I think it’s fair to let your brain forget. You only have so much space that you can store things in your brain. If you don’t use it at all, it’s fine to pick it up again later. For topics that you do not need at all, it’s good that the brain doesn’t keep it. Application is one of the best ways to retain anything. Forgetting is a filter for what is essential to our daily lives.

For me personally, I would just create a page on that topic and would revisit if there is a time when I really need that topic again.

Importance of Intertextuality

Sal Khan talked about having a “skill tree” type of visualization on Khan Academy, but I haven’t really seen one. Nevertheless, I think the idea of a “skill tree” is a good way to gamify knowledge acquisition. I often think back to how Civilization games show the tech tree. Each box is a tech that the player can research. Later tech builds on the tech that the player has already researched. Some techs require multiple prerequisite techs before being able to research. Visualizing real life knowledge acquisition might be a fun way to look at how far you have come. Besides, it also shows the students how all these topics are related to each other and what you can do with each topic.

Inside each block of topic, the students will also know what they can do practically with the topic they have just mastered.

Attention span and merit of youtube videos

Generally, we have an attention span of around 10 to 15 minutes. Some people may be able to focus longer than others, but this is definitely the case for me. After being lectured for 15 minutes or so, my attention starts to waver. If it’s a topic that is interesting, it would go for a little bit longer, but not significantly. Youtube videos (back when they had a time limit for videos) are therefore perfect in exploiting this attention span limit. Having a video be shorter than 10 minutes is great because it forces the instructor to be brief and to-the-point with the topic. It also breaks down the larger topic into smaller bite-sized pieces. To help the students see how each topic connect with each other, the instructor can create some kind of visualization to see how videos are related to each other (e.g. a tree diagram)

In a lecture format, the instructor can lecture for 15 minutes and then maybe test the students or have them engage in peer activities to reset that attention span. This is my idea, so it has not been tested out formally.

Flipped Classrooms

The flipped classroom model is something I’ve experienced first hand. My Japanese class in college employs this model. The student learns the vocab and grammar in their own time (the instructor often posts complementary videos to explain those components) and then employs what they learned in class. On the humanistic side, you get to interact more with the instructor instead of just being lectured. The instructor also gets to know more about the students. On the more technical side, the students get to apply what they’ve learned. For things that they get wrong, they will go back and correct their mistakes themselves before coming back to class to be tested again.

Apprenticeship

This idea is something I really agree with. Unless you are learning for your own curiosity, I think being able to apply what you’ve learned is the most important of education. Before higher education came to dominate the professional world, many professions had an apprenticeship model. Before being able to practice anything, the apprentice must work under a mentor to learn the craft directly. Sal Khan argued that this model can still be applied in the present era. Instead of just learning from textbooks and preparing for exams, students can apprentice under someone during the day and then learn at night (if they wish so). Pretty much, it’s the extension of the flipped classroom model.

With the semester being online this semester, I have the opportunity to actually test this model out. During the day, I will be working with my mentors to solve a certain problem. At night, I will be attending lectures on quantitative methods and potential ways to solve the problems I face during the day.

A lot of Sal Khan’s ideas sound ambitious, but I don’t think we’re too off the mark in applying his ideas to real life. COVID-19 era is a time where traditional higher education institutions are disrupted. Telecommunication technologies came to the frontlines in pushing Khan’s visions forward. It is now that we will see whether his ideas will really bear fruit.

Base illustration courtesy to irasutoya (https://www.irasutoya.com/)

Salman Khan’s View on Education (and a college student's view)