Khan Academy's online math tutorial makes headway at NDMC schools

It has tied up with three of these schools so far where this module is being used; plans are to take it across all 29 NDMC schools

Khan Academy, one of the first online math teaching pro bono sites, has gained traction both in terms of publicity and fund raising, when Bill Gates, an ardent supporter, talked about the site at TED Talks and the Gates Foundation gave it a substantial grant.

Since then, the site, which students had chanced on initially, has garnered 64 million registered users worldwide. At least 15 million students practice regularly. Over a billion videos have been watched, and 10 billion problems solved. In India , two  million users have signed on and there are a million monthly users.

But even the best of free ideas need a push to be effective, which is exactly what the Khan Academy team in India is doing, by inviting state governments as well as private schools to use the site.  The idea is to showcase the Khan Academy approach and its efficacy. Once the learners begin using the site and proof of concept is visible, usage will increase.

Its India site is NCERT curriculum-aligned with practice quiz and exercises. The algorithm allows parents and teachers to track progress in real time and supervise actual practice done by each child. The videos are simple and teach students to solve a problem using multiple ways. On completion, you get a badge and progress can be measured in percentile till a module is mastered.

In India, the approach is to introduce Khan Academy as a tool in the hands of the teacher. So the focus is the teacher, who is trained to allow students to learn online, track their progress, understand the intervention required,  even as he allows students to become self-driven learners.

“There is no drill till you kill,” says Sandeep Bapna, Managing Director, Khan Academy. Bapna and his 14-member team are passionate educators and receive support from Tata Trusts and Central Square Foundation in India. In a school environment, the focus of the Khan academy team stays on getting students to practice.

“We request for at least one 45-minute slot a week with students. ” says  Vidhi Nayar, head of marketing.

Though most of the videos have been created at Mountainview, some content is being created in India too. The  NCERT-aligned curriculum was uploaded in 2016 for math for grades 6-12. The curriculum team is largely focused on creating content not covered by Khan Academy earlier and filling in the gaps. For example, in the US nobody studies profit and loss, while in India it is an important module. The team feels the uploaded videos are simple enough and students are able to understand the instructions even if they do not know the language. The socio-economic  background to understand content is immaterial. A case in point is Aravali Scholars. High school students who come from EWS families have excelled using Khan Academy.  

The video tutorials are in pure Hindi for schools in that medium, and a mixture of Hindi and English to address a larger groups in India and for the Middle East or wherever the Indian Diaspora resides.

The Khan Academy team has also helped recruit a squad under Karnataka's education department, training them to translate Khan Academy content in Kannada language, as per the demands of the state government. It is carrying out a similar exercise in Gujarati.

The NP Bengali Senior Secondary School at Gole Market is one of three schools that started a pilot with Khan academy. An NDMC school, it is equipped with a tab lab that generates much excitement among students. Middle and high school girls who feared math are now excited about taking charge of their own learning process online.

The ten-year-old site is funded by philanthropic capital, crowdsourcing and by fees for designing for a specific group such as a college board in America that conducts the SATs . To give  a level playing field to students, it asked Khan Academy to build a free test prep platform for SAT.  Students link up from their PSAT accounts with Khan academy and based on each student's practice scores, gaps in learning are identified to help students master them.

Assessment of efficacy will only be established over time, as building robust and fluent mathematic skills takes a great deal of perseverance. The team spends a year training and establishing processes with partner schools, and it is only in the second and third year that expected outcomes can be measured.

Khan Academy is now putting the NCERT science curriculum online starting with grades 11 and 12.

The Academy was one of the first to leverage online technology, making content available on laptops and mobile device. Conceptual understand is the building block of this education company.  

“We are resource constrained, so it spurs us to look for innovative solutions. We try and find strategies by which we can grow in a low-cost and low resource-intensive way,” says Bapna.

Khan Academy has localised content to the national curriculum in France, UK and Canada, apart from India, Brazil, Peru and Mexico.

We chose Khan Academy for its product quality: NDMC Chairman Naresh Kumar

Earlier this year, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation  (NDMC) announced a partnership with  online education site, Khan Academy, starting with three schools, with plans to spread it across all its 29 schools across Delhi. Arguably, NDMC schools are among the best-funded with great infrastructure, resources and well-paid teachers.

In a Q&A, Naresh Kumar says the academy was the best option also because it trains teachers on how to intervene with students to improve their skills. Excerpts:

What are the plans for NDMC schools?
We are making all efforts to improve quality education in our schools. Introduction of  Technology intervention is one of them. We are a government organisation, we have funds and are spending them to give our children good education. We have also appointed a national level football coach,  a lady to train our girls aged between nine and 11.

Four years ago, our enrollment stood at 27,000 and this year we will have 35,000 students in our schools. Slowly, our results too are improving.  People are seeing that there is an improvement in results in government schools, and are pulling their kids out of public schools and getting them admitted to government schools.

With project Unnati, we focused on below average students to help them strengthen their math, science and English for two months -- April and May. Regular curriculum studies will resume only in July.

Why did you choose Khan Academy as an academic partner?
Two reasons -- product quality is very good and they did not ask for money. They train the teachers on how to intervene with students to improve their skill. So it was really the best option.

What we are doing is creating one classroom in every school ,  where we can do tutorials in unit tests and in the school tab lab. All its schools are given 40 tabs each for students to use and practice.