Khan Academy encourages students, teachers, and parents to create and monitor short-term and long-term goals for successful improvement in learning. The first step allows students to set an achievable and measurable goal that they can track throughout the year. It is also necessary to distribute smaller goal chunks throughout the long-term objective (Khan, 2011). Khan Academy believes it is vital for the teacher and student to participate equally in the creation and supervision of the goals to see meaningful progress.
From the perspective of a behaviorist, this methodology encourages progressive learning through the interaction of the student’s behavior and their environment (Ormrod, 2019). This method allows for measurable behavior and factors that influence the student’s educational trajectory. The personally-set goals allow for students to perform well within their abilities and encourage positive attitudes towards learning. Furthermore, the response, which in this case is the student’s progress, and the stimuli, the provided educational program, is clearly defined and easy to analyze.
From the standpoint of social cognitive theory, this technique has some disadvantages. For instance, it makes comparing progress or methodology between students difficult (Ormrod, 2019). Each student would have a unique goal and a planned route towards it, it would be difficult to compare students with each other. Additionally, without taking the set goals into consideration, a division would be drawn between students who are presumed deficient and those that are surpassing educational standards. However, students that do not reach certain general norms could still be making progress according to personal goals.
The Khan Academy method for monitoring student progress has a substantial number of advantages and disadvantages. Although it may not be suitable for many classrooms that have more competitive and standardized notions of progress, this methodology works well for students that are prepared to reach their goals and their desired pace. As such, multiple factors can be incorporated into classrooms to achieve positive behavior from students and teachers when it comes to difficulties in overcoming certain obstacles in education.
References
Khan, S. (2011). Let’s use video to reinvent education [Video]. TED. Web.
Ormrod, J. E., Anderman, E. M., & Anderman, L. H. (2019). Educational Psychology: Developing Learners (10th Edition). Pearson.