Our team looked at Intro to HTML and Intro to CSS on Khan Academy (KA). KA is organized by subjects and tutorials as opposed to courses and users do not need to enrol in content, so it’s not what I would consider a MOOC (massive open online course) but is still a MOOC competitor. KA has 40 million students using the site each month and yet has annual expenses of only 24 million USD, so the service seems to be providing education very efficiently.
There are a lot of positive things that could be said about KA, but I’ll cover some of the critiques. According to Thompson (2011), “critics argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling–and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting with real live teachers”. There is some truth to this. Some lessons will start to feel repetitive when it’s video and then challenge, again and again. However, once you learn the basics, the more advanced lessons tend to be more open ended and project based, allowing users to develop their own unique solutions and share them with other users of the site. Although users can’t interact with teachers, users can interact with other users on the site by asking questions, answering questions, and sharing content and projects.
I’m interested in examining the use of gamification in KA. The reason for this is that KA uses extensive gamification throughout the site, and I’d like to learn more about it and how effective it might be. In KA there are points, energy points and badges. KA also includes progress bars, meters, gauges and dashboards just about everywhere possible to indicate progress and achievement.
Have you used online learning that included gamification, and if so did you think it motivated you or improved your learning? What about it did you think was effective in encouraging your learning? Was there anything about it that you felt discouraged you from learning?
These are good questions. You might also tie this in with a critical examination of the role of behaviorism in learning and gamification.
Hi Irwin,
Thanks for your comment and the suggestion to include the role of behaviourism in my look at gamification in KA. I think that’s a great idea and will certainly do so.