I was somewhat familiar with Khan Academy's open resources prior to studying the site this week. A few years ago someone told my dad about some of the resources on the site and he was so excited to teach me, his higher education professional daughter, something about higher education that I hadn't heard about. So, I casually explored Khan Academy about 4 years ago. I am still impressed with all of the resources this site has.
As I viewed Khan Academy's web page this week I realized that the site contains a great deal of STEM related content. These subjects tend to be difficult for most students, so the fact that there are so many additional resources available is awesome. This would be an amazing teaching supplement for math and science teachers at all levels. This is not really my area of teaching, so I didn't explore that content too much. There was one small section of content labeled Grammar, which is more related to my area of teaching, Integrated Reading & Writing. I think Khan Academy's course content can help a lot in the flipped classroom. There are articles and short videos that can be assigned prior to class, and application problems and quizzes that can be done in class. I liked that the content is broken down by topic and into manageable chunks for each unit. The lessons are self-directed and provide students additional help if needed along the lesson. I think this format is perfect for adult learners who are independent learners. KA would also be great for diverse learners since the instructor is able to differentiate learning and assign specific work to specific students.
My critique of Khan Academy is that that lessons do not tell you how long they take. I had to click on each video separately to see the length of the video. As a teacher assigning certain content, I would want to know how long these lessons are expected to take so that I could plan appropriately for in-class and out of class work.
MIT OpenCourseware
Like Khan Acadmy, MIT Open Courseware had more STEM courses than anything else. MIT OpenCourseware, however, has variety of courses that are not STEM related. I thought the most valuable resources on the MIT OCW were the instructor insights for selected subjects. With the instructor insights a new (or seasoned) teacher is provided with not just content, but also necessary information to successfully teach the course. Some of the resources in instructor insight are: course overview, course outcomes, assessment information, student information, etc. So many tips, samples and examples, and strategies for teaching the course are included.
Khan Academy felt more like a CMS that instructor and students are used to navigating. MIT OCW felt more like a repository for content and resources for instructors or students who were self-teaching. I could see myself using either site in teaching in a flipped classroom primarily because there is so much content that a student can explore prior to classroom application.
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