Khan Academy's #youcanlearnanything

Khan has been providing high-quality videos explaining...indeed...everything for a while now. Among everything are Probability and Statistics.

Recently, they reorganized their content and added assessment tools as part of their #youcanlearnanything campaign in order to create self-paced lessons that are personalized to the user and include plenty of videos (of course) and personalized quizzes and feedback.

1) It requires the creation of a free account and selection of a learning topic (the screen shots below are from the Statistics and Probability course).

2) When you start a topic, you take pre-test to assess your current level. This assessment covers simple chart reading, division, and multiplication required for more advanced topics. If you struggle with this, Khan provides you with more material to improve your understanding of these topics.

3) After you complete the assessment, you receive your lesson plan. It includes the topic you select plus an additional introductory math material that you need in order to understand statistics and probability.

Screen shot of the main lesson plan page. Note that this page allows you to track your progress and receive feedback on your strengths and weaknesses.

4) For each skill lesson, you can watch a traditional Khan video. As you answer questions, there are plenty of hints available to take you through the problem and there is also a "scratch pad" feature that would probably work best with a tablet.

What the individual lessons look like (here, Mean, median, mode). Helpful features include explanatory video and the "hint" option to be guided through solving the problem.

While I don't think that this particular product would be useful in class I think this could be a useful supplement for a student who is struggling with statistics and looking for extra material to master skills. Another option would be to list this on a syllabus or LMS page for supplemental materials that students can use for their own studying.

Comments

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