Some subscribers to Phys-L might be interested in a recent post "Re:
Khan Academy on Sixty Minutes" [Hake (2012)]. The abstract reads:
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ABSTRACT: POD's James Morrison wrote (paraphrasing): "Last night
Sixty Minutes featured the 'Kahn Academy: The Future of Education' -
a great depiction of an innovative disruption, now applied to the
sciences, but with a prospect of expanding to other disciplines,
K-16."
Alan Bender then pointed to an initiative "Multi-institutional
Cognitive Coursewares Design" at <http://bit.ly/wIUPGh> by the
"Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities" to "develop
sophisticated online tutorials for various introductory college
courses rather than to wait for textbook publishers and other
companies to do so (and to end up controlling the whole process)."
But Kahn Academy creator Salman Kahn is only indirectly responsible for:
(a) the highly publicized "flipped classroom," see the "Chronicle of
Higher Education's "How 'Flipping' the Classroom Can Improve the
Traditional Lecture" at (for subscribers) <http://bit.ly/xKYX8h>, and
the sequel "Lecture Fail? Students and Professors Sound Off on the
State of the College Lecture" *currently* freely available) at
<http://bit.ly/yKy70D>.
(b) the consequent race to develop tutorials for introductory college courses.
In an interview <http://bit.ly/yAfKac> in "Education Week" Kahn says:
"Very little of this [flipping of the classroom] did I think of
myself. . . . . the flipped classroom is not what we view as the
ideal or the endpoint. We view it almost as a transition state. . . .
instead of holding fixed the time and date when you learn something
and the variable is how well you learn it, we're saying let's hold
fixed how well you learn it, and you learn it at a deep level, and
what's variable is how long you have to learn it, and when you learn
it, and when you revisit the material."
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"People have nowadays . . . got a strange opinion that everything
should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do
so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.
Lectures were once useful; but now, when we can all read, and books
are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. "
Samuel Johnson according to James Boswell (1791) [Samuel Johnson doubtless
rolls in his grave at the thought that in the 21st Century
*videos* are
evidently replacing *reading*.]
REFERENCES [URL's shortened by <http://bit.ly/> and accessed on 15 March 2012.]
Boswell, J. 1791. "Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.", online at
<http://bit.ly/qfDXPz>.
Hake, R.R. 2012. "Re: Khan Academy on Sixty Minutes" on the OPEN!
AERA-L archives at <http://bit.ly/zsYxUk>. Post of 15 Mar 2012
10:59:14-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the
complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and
are also on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at <http://bit.ly/yapt2S> with a
provision for comments.