Lizzie from Khan Academy Supporter update: what you’re making possible

Hi EmailTuna EmailTuna,

Thank you so much for your support in 2020 and in 2021! You are making sure that students, parents, and teachers have what they need to learn anything, anywhere, at any time.

In this newsletter, we have a review of what you made possible in 2020 and a Q&A with Dr. Kristen DiCerbo, our Chief Learning Officer.

You make a difference and take us one step closer to fulfilling our mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

Thank you!

Warm regards,
Lizzie
Community Giving Manager

2020 was a year like no other. 😷 We’ve all had to step up to meet the moment in many different ways.

As one of our amazing supporters, you stepped up to make sure Khan Academy continued to have the resources needed to help as many learners as possible around the world. We are uniquely positioned to play a leading role in filling the gap for students who are learning remotely. And we were able to quickly respond by creating new tools and resources, while constantly adapting to user needs.

In 2020, we had 27 million new registrations—more than double our usual. Now, an average of 20 million of our 118 million registered learners use our site every month. 😀

That’s a lot to keep up with. But that doesn’t mean we put our original 2020 plans on hold. Throughout the year, we’ve also created new content, improved the learning experience our tools offer, and supported students and teachers in a number of ways:

What is learning science and why does it matter at Khan Academy?
People have been studying how we learn—the process of acquiring new knowledge and skills—for years. The goal of the learning sciences is to both better understand how people learn and to design and implement experiences that help people learn more effectively.

At Khan Academy, we want to make sure that learning science informs everything we do—from how we design hints in exercises to how we help teachers use Khan Academy in their classrooms.

How are we using the latest research in learning science?
Instead of solely focusing on the latest hot findings in learning science, we instead ask, “What’s the solid evidence that has been shown across studies to be important?”

Mastery learning is one of those important things. When someone is learning a new skill, research shows that it’s most effective to work on that skill until the student is able to consistently apply it across multiple problems before moving on to the next skill. This short video explains it really well. There have been more than 300 studies investigating mastery learning, so we can see that it helps students learn across many different disciplines and types of students.

Practice and immediate feedback is also really important. It really helps improve your skills when you can get immediate feedback on how you are doing and how you can improve—and then try again. Digital tools like Khan Academy can offer this to learners.

It’s January, a time many of us are making resolutions or at least trying to keep our kids motivated to keep learning, especially as “zoom fatigue” has well and truly set in. Any advice?
Yes! In fact I wrote a blog post about how to stay motivated during COVID. But if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I’ll just say one of the key theories in motivation research is called Expectancy-Value Theory. People are more likely to do things when they expect that they will be successful and when they value the thing they are doing. So think about how you can help set your kid up for success and get them to understand why it matters.

At Khan Academy, we are working on both aspects of this. We want to help students see that with hard work and persistence, they can be successful, so they’re more likely to want to do more.

While students might value activities because of rewards and points, we don’t just want to rely on gamification. We can also help them see how an activity is important for the things they want to do in the future.

Considering that you’ve seen many digital education efforts while working in this field for a long time, what do you think is special about what Khan Academy is doing?
One of the reasons I came to Khan Academy is because it’s so exciting to have so much potential impact on learners and learning outcomes. The power of a small, dedicated group of people to have such big reach is unusual.

I’m also excited about our work to better target those students who need us the most. We’re focusing on giving students in all types of circumstances really high-quality educational resources to help them learn and unlock their potential.

You’ve been at Khan Academy for a few months now. How have you seen Khan Academy shift during the pandemic?
I started on May 1st. And during my second week here, we started creating these new Get Ready for Grade Level courses to make sure kids had mastered all the prerequisite knowledge and were ready to build on that knowledge in the next grade level. The teams created and pulled together these courses in a matter of weeks, and they were some of our most-used content this fall.

Wow, that’s exciting to hear! What would you say to students who can’t wait to go back to the school building?
First, it’s natural to be missing that in-person experience. We know online learning is not a substitute for actually being in a classroom. But, second, you can still learn a lot in our current circumstances. I think this can be an opportunity for students to take ownership of their learning. So I would say to students, “You are in charge of what you learn. What would you like to know?”

When asked about the lack of access among students from low-income households, Sal discussed the need for “disaster recovery” on CBS’s national morning show.

Hear Sal speak about the digital divide and what life is like without internet for a Utah Navajo family on Self Evident: Life Without Internet (When the Whole World Has Gone Virtual), a PBS American Portrait Miniseries.

Caroline Hu Flexer, Khan Academy Kids Co-Founder, was on the Kelly Wright Show on the Black News Channel to talk about the Khan Academy Kids series on identity, race, and justice.

ICYMI: Sal published an op-ed on how to make distance learning work in The New York Times back in August.