My favorite EdTech image

Image: Khan Academy, fair use (I hope). No desire to invoke the wrath of Khan.

Yea, I know what you’re thinking…

It’s an excel graph, dude. And not even a particularly attractive one at that. Time to get a life, data geek.

I will readily cop to that moniker as I have spent much of my life in the data analysis biz. But if you look closely, I believe you’ll find this image from Khan Academy speaks, if not screams, volumes.

Fine I’ll bite. What I am looking at?

This is one group of learners and their progression through a certain Khan Academy course. Not sure about the topic or grade. Doesn’t matter. Vertical axis is the number of modules completed. As you need to demonstrate mastery to complete a Khan Academy module, you can think of it as achievement. Horizontal axis reflects time.

Thanks for the graphing primer. Point?

This graph demonstrates the folly of trying to teach to the average student as occurs in a typical classroom scenario. An average progression through the middle of the graph (as shown by my added black line) would have optimally served no one. Too slow for some. Too fast for others. Brianna would have been bored out of her mind. Jacob would have been overwhelmed. And if it’s a subject like math where concepts build on one another, Jacob might quickly resign himself to the fact that he’s just “not good at this” and another math hater is unleashed upon the earth.

This is why we divide up classes based on ability, no?

Fair enough, but let me introduce you to my new hero — Ms. Rust Colored Dots. As a lot of the kids in this class look alike, I’ve taken the liberty of pointing her out with the big arrow. Top of her class. Prime example of one of your high ability kids, right?  Hmm, but if we track back in time a month or two, we see that Ms. Rust Colored Dots arose from very modest performance beginnings. Beginnings that would have likely had her placed in the “lower ability” group. One size (or even two or three sizes) fits all just doesn’t work. Especially for the bottom group.

So you want to replace math teachers with Khan Academy?

Easy there, Mr. Slippery Slope, sheesh. The point is how important self-paced learning is, particularly in a topic like Math, and how intelligent tutoring (or adaptive learning systems or learning games) are ideally suited for this purpose. One of the reason we love to play video games so much is because of their ability to continually provide just the right level of challenge.

But let’s be clear, what we’re talking about here is still fundamentally “drill and kill”. Made better by technology and intelligent instructional and motivational design, but “drill and kill” nonetheless. We still need to engender conceptual understanding and that’s what the new math and its hands-on, investigative approaches are supposed to be all about. (Check out my post about the new math).

So yes, there’s still a need for instructors to facilitate discovery and provide the necessary encouragement and guidance to foster understanding. Like everything else on the earth that wants to survive, the teaching profession needs to adapt to changes in the environment. Less sage on the stage. More meddler in the middle, as Erica McWilliam puts it.

And by the way, don’t put it pass the Khan Academies of the world to figure out to aid this discovery based learning cause too, particularly with the emergence of innovative virtual reality based interfaces (check out this article about a virtual chemistry lab as an example).

OK, I’m with you. Good graph. But favorite EdTech image ever? Really?

Hey, I am a data geek, remember? But success kid memes are definitely a close second.