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Comment by georgecmu | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why one would choose lectures narrated by a single guy without expertise in any of the topics over real lectures given by world-class faculty and researchers.

Berkeley, MIT, Yale and other top universities in the past decade have made hundreds of courses available in audio and video form. I've been hooked on Berkeley courses for a few years now, actually wishing sometimes that my commute were longer.

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Khan is an Electrical Engineer from MIT with an MBA from Harvard. His ability to teach far outperforms the majority of university professors.

Try watching some of his videos.

I won't argue that the guy is a very talented and eloquent speaker. My point is different: he may be very erudite, but the depth of his knowledge in any of the subjects he's teaching (except maybe some subjects in EE and finance) is not going to compare with that of professors in the respective fields. Certainly, the fact that he's addressing these subjects at high-school level, does a lot to level the field for him.

By the way, I'm not sure how listing his credentials is supportive of your claim that "his ability to teach far outperforms the majority of university professors."

Finally, it's not the anonymous 'majority of university professors' that I'm comparing him to, but the top people in their fields at the top American universities. Those people must excel both in research and teaching, otherwise they simply don't make it there.

I have degrees from MIT and UC Berkeley. I can attest from experience that at such institutions, while there are indeed some professors who excel in both research and teaching, the vast majority are there because of the quality of their research with teaching a secondary concern.

Also, I think having a huge depth of knowledge is really not that important when teaching introductory topics (as long as you don't get anything wrong!). Having tutored students for many years, I'm quite certain that the biggest impediment to learning such topics is motivation, which is addressed more by a teacher's enthusiasm and speaking ability than the depth of their knowledge.

think having a huge depth of knowledge is really not that important when teaching introductory topics

Absolutely, and as I said, that levels out the playing field for him a lot. Partially I was misled by the enthusiasm of the HN users here for the lectures; I didn't expect the crowd here to be so excited about high-school material.

He teaches a good chunk of first and second year math college courses. Especially the more popular ones applicable to a broad number of majors.

OK, I really need a reality check here. First, let me make it clear - on every reddit discussion about math and about Khan Academy that's I've been involved in, I heartily recommend it. I think what he's doing makes him one of the education heroes of the 21st century, and I'm a public school math teacher! But..."eloquent speaker"??? Khan drives me UP THE GODDAM WALL with his palsy-mousing and repetition while he's thinking on-the-fly. I mean, what amazes me about him is he's able to just sit down and do these videos without any script beforehand, which you can tell because he just starts making up examples while he's explaining things!!! But as a teacher - and professional speaker - and former theatre major - he makes me crazy. EVERY video I've seen goes like this:

"OK, we're going to cover (insert topic here). Now suppose we want to solve 2X=5, that's, uh, 2x, uh twoooo, (wiggles stylus, then writes 2), uh X (wiggles stylus, then writes X, eeeeequals, (wiggles stylus, then writes the equals sign), equals (wiggles stylus, writes 5) five..." Ad nauseum.

I have heard literally NO ONE mention this in any discussion about Khan Academy. Why? I haven't hallucinated this behavior - it's on EVERY video, because, well, it's his STYLE. And I've never seen this behavior at a blackboard by any instructor, no matter how crummy they were (and, whoo, have I seen some crummy ones!).

Please, someone tell me that I've fallen into some universe where I've become the character Monk, and I'm the only one who's bothered by Khan's presentation!

His lessons aren't Teaching Company level, and he could definitely benefit from doing multiple takes and splicing them together. Still his style works for me, and I'd happily trade in any math teacher I ever had for Khan.

It's an unfortunate fact of teaching that certain styles just don't work for specific personalities. One person's harmless eccentricity is another's grating lesson-derailer. There are going to be some people you can't do much to help, no matter how good you are, or how attentive the student is. And it's not anyone's fault.

You've fallen into some universe where you've become the character Monk, and you're the only one who's bothered by Khan's presentation!

I upvoted you because I got the humor. Seriously, at this point I am completely willing to accept this is just me, because I have heard no one complain about this but me!

I've just tried to watch one video -- Carnot cycle.

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/carnot-cycle-and-carnot-eng...

I've read the first book of the Feynman lectures during the last six months, only for fun, to compare the insights of Feynman with the education I've received during my school time, twenty years ago.

In that lecture Khan was ALMOST right, but I think it's not good. He mentions in one moment "the energy given to the system was the higher potential energy of the rocks" which is wrong. There's no the same amount of rocks, so the energy of the remaining (less) rocks is the same as the energy of more rocks before in the process he described.

Feynman's approach to actually understand that the energy transferred was to "speed up" the movement of the gas molecules is right, this is not.

He also "derives" the formula with delta U = Q - ... where he should have just written Q = ... because that was what was intentionally done.

So I'm not satisfied, I believe Khan was able to deliver much better lecture had he first prepared himself a little more. Maybe using some simpler book as the start but using Feynman for the insight to be able to explain what's really going on.

email him, if you really want to help him improve it

I suppose part of it is that they target a very different audience. He addresses subjects at high-school level: something that any reasonably educated person should be competent enough to do.

Most professors at those institutions care very little about the teaching part of their job. The incentives they face make it that way.

Do you know this from personal experience or is it just one of those things that "everyone knows"?

My experience of both real-life lectures and podcasted ones suggests otherwise.

Podcasted lectures probably show an enormous selection bias, in that professors who don't care about teaching probably have no desire to make their lectures available to a wider audience. That aside I will concur that "professors don't like to teach" is probably much more anecdotal than evidence backed.

You also have to be pretty confident about your teaching ability to put that stuff up on the internet for everyone to see. I'd like to put some of my lectures online in a year or two, but currently they don't meet the Khan standard.

Regarding research professors, the chair of the department I was a graduate student at once said that your teaching can only hurt your career; it can never help it.

Personal experience and the experience of colleagues. I spent 11 years in the undergraduate/graduate system both learning and teaching. It's also something you can learn if you ever have to look for work in academia. It's very rare that anyone cares about your teaching credentials. Typically undergraduate education is at the bottom of a professor's concerns. First is research/publications/funding. Next are graduate students and their research. Undergraduate teaching is an 'in the time left' activity.

Professors have four jobs: fundraiser, researcher, teacher and tester. They're evaluated in that priority in most universities. They have a few assistants for their various jobs, but it's mainly on their shoulders. A university professor's job should really be separated into four separate jobs, and universities can provide much better services in each area. A teacher who can just concentrating the best of teaching, a marker who can provide flexible final examination services so people can take their finals on their schedules, a fundraiser who's actually focusing on fundraising and not being miserable doing it, and a researcher who actually just researches and is not hired by a corporation.

I think it may be unfair to say that they don't care, but certainly the incentives weigh against spending their efforts on teaching (against, say, writing a paper or yet another grant application).

To the best of my knowledge, teaching professors take course evaluations very seriously. If grants and papers is all you care about, then you take a different track (scientist vs professor).

You are misinformed. At the vast majority of college/university-level schools, the faculty incentives run strongly toward research and weakly (or not at all) towards teaching. It is definitely not the case that the grants-and-papers types gravitate to "scientist" positions in preference to "professor" positions.

Put another way, if you are someone who is primarily interested in teaching at the college/university level, and are not as interested in research ("grants and papers"), there are very, very, very few stable employment opportunities for you.

A lot of community colleges consist of just teachers, being disconnected from the need to do research. All they do is teach, and often just have a masters. I've usually also found they are significantly better at teaching their subjects than universities, especially in mathematics.

Ah---this is true. However, most community colleges do not have computer science programs, and many that do have it as a one-class-per-term appendage off another department (usually math). But for people in other fields, community college[1] does indeed often pose an opportunity for "just teaching" at the post-secondary level.

[1] which non-US readers might call simply "college"---a typically two-year program, post-secondary, often with a large number of vocational programs but usually also teaching a general education curriculum that might enable one to transfer into the second or third year of university.

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