My management lessons from Khan Academy
Khan Academy
as we all perceive is a non-profit educational organization which started off
as a video library. The Founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan used to provide
remote tuitions to one of his cousins interactively using Yahoo Doodle images.
Based on feedback from his cousin, additional cousins began to take advantage
of his interactive, remote tutoring. Slowly he transitioned the remote tuitions
to You Tube videos and progress began. Thus came into existence the Pillar in
Education for Today’s World “The Khan Academy”.
I would like to intercept his Organization in terms of” Hierarchy
of Plans”. Hierarchy of Plans is a widely used management concept. It refers to
the broad purpose of an organization comprising of its Vision, Mission and
Procedures adopted to achieve them.
Hierarchy Of Plans:
Every
Organization starts with some idea and motive behind it. The Khan Academy
started off as a non-profit organization. It works on “Hierarchy Of Plans” to
cater to the niche motive of its existence. The Hierarchy of Plans comprise of
the following:
o
Vision: Salman Khan started the academy with
a vision of turning the academy into a charter school. Its Tagline “A free world-class education for
anyone anywhere” talks a lot about its vision and mission.
o
Mission: Khan Academy
is a non-profit organization with
the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class
education to anyone anywhere.
o
Objectives: Learning has no Barriers of age, community,
caste, area of expertise etc. With this objective in mind, Khan Academy caters
to the needs of all by providing knowledge about basic mathematics to college
level calculus, e-commerce, biology, chemistry, economics and many more. It
Comprises of the following:
o
Video
Library with over 3200 videos in various topic areas and over 165 million lessons.
o
Automated exercises with continuous assessment provided
for them
o
One To One tuitions are also provided based on data
collected by the system.
o
Policies: To reach to a large audience, an
organization adopts some policies to protect the data and information of its
members and visitors. As Khan Academy provides online services, it becomes more
crucial to protect the information of its visitors. Khan Academy values the
privacy of its members and others who visit and use the Website and make it a
priority to personally protect identifiable information that is obtained from
individuals both online and off-line. To protect the privacy, especially of
young children, Khan Academy puts in place certain features designed to help protect
the personally identifiable information of children less than 13 years of age.
Registration of children below 13 years of age is provided only on consent of
their parents.
o
Procedures: The Various processes and procedures
are followed by an organization to achieve its mission. The Khan Academy works
as below:
o
From Students’
Perspective: Extensive video
library, interactive challenges, and assessments are made available to students
on internet from any computer with access to the web. Students are provided
access to Complete custom self paced learning tool to make them learn at their
own pace whenever and wherever they want. There is a dynamic system available
to help the students with exercises and problems faced by them. For examinations
purposes, each student is provided with customized profiles, points and badges
to measure progress.
o
From Teachers’
Prospective: Teachers, faculty and coaches have complete visibility about
their student’s progress. They have been provided with facility to intervene in
between to target the student’s progress. . They have an access to the whole
database of their students’ details about their progress reports. Also A Real
Time Class Report is generated subject-wise.
o
Khan Academy Advantage:
1.
Every
Problem is generated randomly, so there is plenty practice material and that
too with hints for better understanding.
2.
Analysis
is done on the basis of one’s browsing to know his/her interests better and
assist him/her in finding the relevant information.
3.
It
Provides a map of knowledge which shows all of one’s challenges, skills, and
concepts. Suggestions are provided on the areas and skills to work on. Challenges
are provided which cover combination of smaller concepts. Learning is a fun there!
4.
Appreciation
is given on the basis of tracked upon performance of students in the form of
badges. Some of the smaller badges are very easy to earn, but the higher badges
might require years of work.
o
Future Plans: In November 2011 Khan Academy received a grant of $5 million from Ireland-based The O'Sullivan Foundation
.The Fund will be utilized in expanding the teacher & faculty base,
Extending content through crowd-sourced contributions, following a
Wikipedia-style model and Developing curricula to help users blend the content
with physical teaching through stem learning. The Academy is continuously
catering to the needs in untouched areas of arts and history. As a result, it
has recently appointed Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, both experts in
their areas as their teaching faculty. YouTube video creators Vi Hart and Brit
Cruise have also recently joined the teaching faculty. A series of summer
school camps are planned to start in Northern California from June 2012 to test
curricula for real-world schools.
With the
study of the above Hierarchy of Plans, I have perceived that the organization
has done really well in the past few years. It stands as a strong pillar in the
area of education which has changed the whole idea of the education system and
has catered to the needs of all. The organization is on the path of continuous Success
with Miles to Go! Let us all join our hands with Salman Khan and Rethink
Learning in his innovative style!
