Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonrr | Hacker News Reader

This is an ongoing falsehood. Several Khan Academy employees were real honest-to-goodness teachers, and we work with teachers directly in-person every single day to make the product and the content better. In addition, we are looking for more folks to make videos. Our standards are extremely high, and that will take time, but I disagree that this is our biggest challenge in scaling.

Furthermore, your opinion of the Biology content may be spot-on, but there are thousands of students who say it's making their lives measurably better. Maybe it would be 100,000 if the content was better; it's hard to know for sure. I'm just not sure that it is directly affecting scale at this point, or that there's not a greater effect on scale trying to get more people to use our existing content.

Disclaimer: I'm the lead designer for KA.

View on HN

  > This is an ongoing falsehood.

I realize that now, and apologize for spreading a misconception. We don't hear much about non-engineers through the biased HN-filter; hiring Silverstein gets you headlines. Part of my point, however, stands.

  > but there are thousands of students who say it's
  > making their lives measurably better.

I'd prefer KA to emphasize content -- quality content made by solid educators in their respective field -- over delivery method. That the latter enjoys priority right now (as Khan's comments make clear) may be a necessity, but an unfortunate one. But I'm pretty sure that you'll get there.

I'd prefer KA to emphasize content -- quality content made by solid educators in their respective field -- over delivery method.

Depending on what you mean by "educators," I might prefer that Khan Academy (and a bajillion different competing providers) offer up content by actual domain experts rather than content by "educators." It is, of course, possible for a person to be both a domain expert in actual fact and a secondary school teacher by occupational category--I've seen Richard Dedekind described as an example, although I'm not sure I'd describe his teaching position as one resembling that of a high school teacher in the United States. But anyway the correct idea that content has to be both factually accurate and appropriate to guide the development of young learners does not constrain content-creation only to persons with the formal credentials of schoolteachers. Many of the best learning materials for young people today were produced by authors who were not K-12 schoolteachers in any stage of their career.

  > Depending on what you mean by "educators," I might prefer
  > that Khan Academy (and a bajillion different competing
  > providers) offer up content by actual domain experts
  > rather than content by "educators."

Don't worry. I chose the term "educator" over "teacher" or "expert" for that very reason: namely that neither having a degree in Education nor a PhD in physics makes you a particularly suitable physics educator. KA needs people who can do for biology, neuroscience, history, and so on what Khan can do for college physics and maths.

I suspect that they're going to be PhDs and practitioners as opposed to K-12 schoolteachers -- but I really don't give a damn about credentials. There are fantastic high school teachers out there. There are PhDs and masters in their respective fields who are ridiculously bad educators, especially at the level of teaching that KA provides.

That's a worrisome attitude if your goal is to make the best site possible. Great sites aren't made by people that get defensive in response to user feedback.

Rather, that's a recipe for stagnation and complacency.

His response seems reasonable in the face of factually incorrect user feedback based on widespread misconceptions. Don't overgeneralize.

User feedback: "Materials for topic area X is poor compared to your flagship content."

Employee response: "It's good enough/better than even worse options."

That's a poor response, and not what I would expect from a team with the culture to make a great product.

That's not defensive, that's just a response to the statement...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com