Khan academy

From time to time I read learned articles in places like the NYRB about the progress of online learning. The idea being that you can deliver world class teaching to anyone with access to an internet connection, with the debate being about how one mitigates the absence of face-to-face contact and interaction. One option in this connection being the provision of student chat rooms to go along with the online lectures. Another being to screen the lectures in real classrooms with classroom helpers.

For the first time yesterday, quite by chance, I happened to try an online lecture from the Khan Academy (reference 1), which I believe to be just one of a number of substantial not-for-profit outfits in the field. All, I imagine, from the US, they being a bit keener and a bit quicker on the uptake of the new over there.

The lecture that I tried, on something called convolution, was very slick; someone had clearly gone to a lot of trouble. The format was that you heard the voice while watching activity on a computer version of a blackboard, complete with different coloured chalks.

I found the inclusion of little slips and wrinkles in an effort to be more lifelike rather irritating.

I think I would have got on better with a Powerpoint than a fake blackboard with more or less real handwriting.

I found the lecture easy to follow but far too slow.

After a while I switched out and found some much more suitable lecture notes, in the form of a pdf, from some real undergraduate course at a university in Maryland.

But that is not to say that there is not a place for online learning. I was just unlucky in that the course I happened to light upon was not the right one for me.

Reference 1: https://www.khanacademy.org/.