Pros and Cons

Pros and Cons of Using Khan Academy

Pros

The Site is Free

Khan Academy is free. There are no subscription fees. Their operation is fully funded by donations and volunteerism.

Consistent Engagement

Students can work on several activities at their ability level until they feel confident to move to another level.

Empowers Teachers

Teachers have access to free content from the site which they can use in their lessons. This frees up some time so that they can focus more on teaching. They can also assign content and learning activities to their students in a variety of formats, and teachers can easily monitor students' performances and assign activities to students based on their ability level. Khan Academy also has an artificial intelligence named Khanmigo that can help teachers with lesson planning.

Empowers Students: Promotes Mastery of Content and Personalized Learning

Students are encouraged to master the content they are learning. LearnStorm assists students with achieving this goal. Teachers can set course mastery goals or unit mastery goals for students to help students to build their proficiency in the subject area. Additionally, the teacher can easily tailor lessons to meet the needs of the learner.

Instant feedback 

Feedback is immediately given to students as they complete each question, and they also receive work solutions for any questions they may not understand.

Content Aligns with Standards

 This allows the content to be integrates well into teachers’ lesson planning, thus reducing planning time and teachers can spend more time on meeting student needs.

No Distracting Advertisements

Many free sites tend to survive on advertisements to continue operations. However, Khan Academy's donation platform helps the website to maintain sustainability.

CONS

Inefficient as a Self-learning Tool

Users of the site may find the content difficult to use as a self-learning tool. Most of the videos and notes are procedural rather than conceptual. The content shows you how to do things but not necessarily basic principles, ideas and relationships. Learner may not be able to construct enduring understandings.

Limited Accessibility

There is limited differentiated instruction. Many lessons are text only, however, there are some videos. In addition, there is no built-in text-to-speech application.

All Subjects are not Divided into Grade Levels

Mathematics and Reading and Language Arts are separated into grade levels. However, other subject areas are only separated into units. This can create difficulties for a person who is self- learning.

Inaccessibility to all Teaching and Learning Resources

The artificial intelligence named Khanmigo, that assists both teachers and students is only available in the USA.

Links

Description and Features

Evaluation Rubrics and Score 

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