Rewiring Education by John D. Couch

Author:John D. Couch [Couch John, Towne Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944648435
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

ONLINE LEARNING

Another big recent change in access has been the emergence of online learning. Massive open online courses (MOOCs)—programs and classes taken on the internet—are perhaps the most prominent of these. Aimed mostly at adult learners so far, MOOCs come in many different variations and can cover just about any topic in the world. Despite a rocky start (due to overly optimistic expectations), MOOCs have grown significantly over the past five years, evolving from virtual classrooms to self-paced, on-demand lessons students can take in their own time. Some MOOCs work with colleges and professional programs to offer for-credit courses, while others offer stand-alone classes designed for those who just want to learn more about things. Some MOOCs cost money, either per class taken, by the hour, or in return for receiving specific credentials at the end of the course, but others are free for anyone to take. Udacity, Coursera, and Harvard/MIT’s edX have led the way in expanding this still emerging field.44

But MOOCs aren’t for everyone. Structured online learning can take an incredible amount of self-discipline and motivation—often missing from struggling students—meaning MOOCs alone, even when they become more available for K–12 students, may not be an effective solution for teaching them. A mistake many MOOCs make is simply moving lecture content online, without bothering to create a new context for online learning. Turning a lecture into a video and posting it online is the lowest possible form of educational technology and has nothing to do with truly rewiring education. I do believe, however, that all learners could benefit from using interactive and well-designed online lessons to complement, although not replace, in-person, face-to-face learning, in what’s often referred to as a blended learning approach.45

Khan Academy is an online school that specializes in creating free and easy-to-understand learning videos on a wide variety of topics. Sal Khan founded the nonprofit as a simple YouTube channel in 2006, onto which he uploaded a few videos of him explaining some math concepts for a cousin. Sal’s videos were effective at simplifying otherwise complex ideas, and soon others began finding and sharing them. A lot of others. Before long hundreds, and then thousands, of people were learning math from these three- to five-minute videos. Eventually, as Sal kept making more videos, he decided to become more formalized. Khan Academy was born, and quickly outgrew being a YouTube channel. As the overwhelming demands for these short videos outgrew Sal’s capability to make them, he expanded and began hiring others who were just as adept at simplifying complex concepts. By expanding the topics covered to things beyond math, it drove hundreds of thousands more people to the site. At its peak, Khan Academy had nearly 10 million active students, making it the largest distributor of educational content on the planet.46

Sal Khan, meanwhile, had moved out of obscurity and into the realm of legend. In 2012, Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. But the fame never went to Sal’s

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