25 January 2018
An offshoot of the Khan Academy is the Khan Lab School, founded by Salman Khan, who is also the founder of the Khan Academy.
According to Salman Khan, the Khan Lab School is “an open source approach to educational innovation” where students are not grouped by age but by level of independence, based on skills like time management and self-regulation.
The school is testing ground for new approaches to learning. For example, the school focusses on competency-based or mastery-based approach to learning, where the focus is on conceptual understanding and mastery of content before students move on to the next level.
Every week, students at the school identify their unique needs and set goals that determine the school work they undertake. They learn skills in a variety of ways, from meeting a teacher for a “pop-up class” to going into blended learning platforms like Khan Academy, which allow them to move at their own pace. Each student’s progress is charted by teachers, half of whom act like tutors, helping students with academic work, while the rest, called advisers, help learners to know themselves and understand their own learning.
The Khan Academy itself provides online videos, supplemented with exercises. It is most well-known for mathematics but it is also rapidly expanding into world history, grammar, economics and art history. There is also the possibility of the Khan Academy introducing certification and accreditation for its courses in the future.