Q&A: using Khan Academy for Adult Irish Education

Mayo Adult Educator Sorcha Moran has a background in Software Engineering, but changed careers after studying some post-graduate courses on Adult Education.

She has been working for Mayo/Sligo/Leitrim Education and Training Board as a tutor in Maths and Computers for the past 6 years. At the ETB they currently teach maths to part-time students at FETAC levels 1-5, and she personally teach levels 3-5. She uses a number of approaches in her maths teaching, including Khan Academy.

MATHletes asked Sorcha 5 questions about how she uses Khan Academy in her teaching. Here is what she told us:

I was first introduced to Khan Academy when my daughter took part in MATHletes Challenge 2014. I was watching closely what she was doing, and it was clear to me that Khan Academy had a lot to offer my adult learners also.

First of all, Khan Academy has an interface that appeals to all ages. Most of the Maths resources I come across online have a target audience of young children or exam-year adolescents, so they can be very childish or text-book looking. Khan Academy is a resource that is supportive and gives freedom to the learner at the same time, and it facilitates the theories of Adult Learning (Andragogy) very well.

The learner has full control over what they want to learn and when. They can follow a suggested order, or dip in and out of areas that are relevant to them at the time. It covers all levels from Early Math on so learners have the opportunity to fill their own knowledge gaps. Khan Academy has lots of intuitive/experiential learning which I love. It makes the learning of concepts much more concrete. My learners love the ‘Hint‘ facility which outlines the solutions one step at a time. These solutions are colour coded so that they are easy to follow, and more importantly, they don’t skip steps.

For the tutor, Khan Academy provides very detailed analytics that are very useful for monitoring the progress of students. Any adult class consists of a group of learners with very varying past life and learning experiences. This means that they all have a unique set of knowledge gaps. All of the learners fear that they are going to be the only ones that doesn’t understand something. Using the analytics, the tutor can see how a student is getting on without them publicly asking for help. The fact that Khan Academy covers every step of the learning process for each concept also gives them the opportunity to fill their individual knowledge gaps in private. They can attempt questions as many times as they like, and watch videos over and over again, without judgement.

Finally, with Khan Academy, the learners can be involved in the planning and evaluation of their own learning. They can monitor their own progress, and get a great sense of satisfaction and confidence as they see those blue squares fill up.

Using Khan Academy, I can hand over responsibility for learning to the learner. I use it in different ways in each class level. For FETAC(QQI) level 3, Khan Academy maps very nicely to the learning outcomes required. At this level, I use Khan Academy to give me the opportunity to have individualised learning while still meeting my goals.

I give the students a ‘playlist’, which is a document outlining their course with links to the relevant exercises and tutorials on Khan Academy. This way, the learners have the freedom to learn whatever they want on Khan Academy, and also are focused on the learning outcomes required for their course.

I let the learners work at their own pace, and I use the ‘Recommendations’ facility to ensure that we have a common study area each week. I can monitor the progress of the students and clearly see who’s struggling with what. I use the start of class for a class discussion on the common study area and project work to bring it into real-life context. This also facilitates the learners to learn from each other without having to formally asking for help. If I see that someone is struggling, I can also use the ‘Recommendations’ facility to privately highlight some exercises on base skills they may be lacking for the specific problem area.

In my level 4 class students use Khan Academy to revise over skills they learned last year, but will need again. I use the ‘Recommendations’ facility as homework so that they can work on similar problems and concepts to those we are learning in class. They use Khan Academy as a revision tool.

In level 5, I use the ‘Recommendations’ facility so that they can learn new concepts before they arrive to class. They learn the concepts and theories at home. We use class time then to discuss and clarify the concepts, but it means that we can spend more time practicing questions together instead of them struggling with homework alone each week.

A huge benefit of Khan Academy for me is that learners can continue their learning between their weekly class in a supported environment at home.

Try it out from a learner’s perspective first until you are comfortable with the layout yourself. Start your students off with work they find easy to give them the confidence in using Khan Academy and the computer. You may have to highlight the benefits of using Khan Academy for the learners. The weaker learners tend to avoid the ‘extra’ work, but once they get using it they quickly see how they can use it to catch up themselves. After that, go with the flow! Every learner will get something from it regardless of their prior knowledge, learning experiences or starting level. All they need is the confidence!