Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
Millions of people come out of college every year around the world,still we could only find a few ideas that make an impact in the whole world. And Khan Academy(http://www.khanacademy.org/) is one of those few ideas.Most of you have heard about the MIT graduate and Harvard MBA Salman Khan who can imagine the potential of his tutoring videos in the world of education. Here lets have a look at the CNN 60 minutes covering Khan Academy.
Starting from a few maths videos for his cousins to enriching 3200 plus videos on different subjects , differe
nt sub-levels within each subject based on difficulty levels, 3.5 million unique users, 86.6 million lessons taught and 100 million exercise done: How Mr. Khan has accomplished this is really an interesting case study .Here is my management lessons learnt from Khan Academy.
How this concept really works? In a traditional class room teaching, everyone is taught at the same speed.If one student could not cope up with a subject,the whole class can not wait for him.Gradually the s
tudent who could not understand the fundamental of a subject fully,he will start creating a wall between the subject and himself/herself.Here comes Khan Academy into the picture.It uploaded the videos of different subjects on Youtube.com for the students to learn.If one student gets stuck into a problem,he can rewind the video many times he wants.This will help the student to understand the subject till he satisfied.Its different from traditional classroom teaching in the sense that a student will not learn 80% or 60% of a concept,but 100% before going for the next lesson.
Like any organization,Khan Academy has a vision and a mission statement. With mission statement "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere",it is constantly working to provide a better online platform and quality lessons to cater more and more people by diversifying its teaching subjects, starting from basic maths to micro/macro economics,partnering with universities,researchers,academicians,subject experts,targeting more schools to provide students a
platform for self study.
Khan Academy is an innovative model if organizational structure is concerned.It has more employees working on the content of the lessons and on the platform that delivers the lessons than strategy team or planning team.According to Mr. Khan, organization should always focus on its core competence first.For Khan Academy,content and platform are their USP and they are striving to make these two things better and better to its intended recipients.
Theory Y states that management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work duties in a job.How Khan academy is ensuring quality work in its project?Khan Academy is not for profit and hence it cannot pay millions of dollar for salaries.Then How?Mr. Khan says that he recruited people who wanted to work for Khan academy,for higher social returns instead of higher economic returns.Such people,though getting less salary than their previous employers,are more self motivated and more ambitious to perform than others;they become the most productive employees.For them working for betterment of society is more rewarding and stimulating than number-crunching & high paying jobs in a top Investment Bank.Till now Khan is able to attract lots of talented people starting from Google's no 1 employee to Yahoo,Bing employees.
How this non-for-profit model works?What about scalability?According to Khan,m
ost of the trillions dollars spent on education sector are non-for profit.Khan Academy is able to attract a high number of Philanthropist and constantly attracting donations.Google also provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, to allow for translation of the Khan Academy's content, and to allow for the hiring of additional staff.Mr. Khan's idea also gets a lot of attraction from the media.Even Bill gates has endorsed to his learning resources.Till now the whole project is funded by donation.
From the strategic point of view,Khan Academy is trying to take the virtual classroom idea to a traditional class room.It is working with Los Altos School district to provide the lessons in classrooms where students can self learn and also from peers.Assignments are provided in http://www.khanacademy.org/ where students can practise as much as he/she wants and accordingly reports are generated for individual students.By looking into the report,teachers can help a student in his/her weak areas.The same model can be expanded to every corner of the world.Here is the video of how peer tutoring works in Khan Academy model.
According to Mr. Khan,the Khan Academy model is open ended.It can reach
to students of remote Africa in the same way it can reach to a US student.With the help of NGOs,the lessons can be distributed offline or through DVDs.It can help a private student like it helps a school student.It can help a soldier in Burmese camp like it helps a monk in Tibetian monastery. The boundary is unlimited.
It is said learning is a never ending process.And Khan Academy is trying to target every individual who cherish to be educated and enlightened.No doubt,TIME magazine is right,when it recognizes Mr. Khan as "Time 100 Most Influential People for 2012".
Starting from a few maths videos for his cousins to enriching 3200 plus videos on different subjects , differe
nt sub-levels within each subject based on difficulty levels, 3.5 million unique users, 86.6 million lessons taught and 100 million exercise done: How Mr. Khan has accomplished this is really an interesting case study .Here is my management lessons learnt from Khan Academy.How this concept really works? In a traditional class room teaching, everyone is taught at the same speed.If one student could not cope up with a subject,the whole class can not wait for him.Gradually the s
tudent who could not understand the fundamental of a subject fully,he will start creating a wall between the subject and himself/herself.Here comes Khan Academy into the picture.It uploaded the videos of different subjects on Youtube.com for the students to learn.If one student gets stuck into a problem,he can rewind the video many times he wants.This will help the student to understand the subject till he satisfied.Its different from traditional classroom teaching in the sense that a student will not learn 80% or 60% of a concept,but 100% before going for the next lesson.Like any organization,Khan Academy has a vision and a mission statement. With mission statement "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere",it is constantly working to provide a better online platform and quality lessons to cater more and more people by diversifying its teaching subjects, starting from basic maths to micro/macro economics,partnering with universities,researchers,academicians,subject experts,targeting more schools to provide students a
platform for self study.Khan Academy is an innovative model if organizational structure is concerned.It has more employees working on the content of the lessons and on the platform that delivers the lessons than strategy team or planning team.According to Mr. Khan, organization should always focus on its core competence first.For Khan Academy,content and platform are their USP and they are striving to make these two things better and better to its intended recipients.
Theory Y states that management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work duties in a job.How Khan academy is ensuring quality work in its project?Khan Academy is not for profit and hence it cannot pay millions of dollar for salaries.Then How?Mr. Khan says that he recruited people who wanted to work for Khan academy,for higher social returns instead of higher economic returns.Such people,though getting less salary than their previous employers,are more self motivated and more ambitious to perform than others;they become the most productive employees.For them working for betterment of society is more rewarding and stimulating than number-crunching & high paying jobs in a top Investment Bank.Till now Khan is able to attract lots of talented people starting from Google's no 1 employee to Yahoo,Bing employees.
How this non-for-profit model works?What about scalability?According to Khan,m
ost of the trillions dollars spent on education sector are non-for profit.Khan Academy is able to attract a high number of Philanthropist and constantly attracting donations.Google also provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, to allow for translation of the Khan Academy's content, and to allow for the hiring of additional staff.Mr. Khan's idea also gets a lot of attraction from the media.Even Bill gates has endorsed to his learning resources.Till now the whole project is funded by donation.From the strategic point of view,Khan Academy is trying to take the virtual classroom idea to a traditional class room.It is working with Los Altos School district to provide the lessons in classrooms where students can self learn and also from peers.Assignments are provided in http://www.khanacademy.org/ where students can practise as much as he/she wants and accordingly reports are generated for individual students.By looking into the report,teachers can help a student in his/her weak areas.The same model can be expanded to every corner of the world.Here is the video of how peer tutoring works in Khan Academy model.
According to Mr. Khan,the Khan Academy model is open ended.It can reach
to students of remote Africa in the same way it can reach to a US student.With the help of NGOs,the lessons can be distributed offline or through DVDs.It can help a private student like it helps a school student.It can help a soldier in Burmese camp like it helps a monk in Tibetian monastery. The boundary is unlimited.It is said learning is a never ending process.And Khan Academy is trying to target every individual who cherish to be educated and enlightened.No doubt,TIME magazine is right,when it recognizes Mr. Khan as "Time 100 Most Influential People for 2012".
1 comment:
Wow this is really interesting and thought provoking. In this materialistic world there are individuals who care about knowledge.
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