5 Tips for Using Khan Academy for Remote Learning | HP® Tech Takes (2024)

Khan Academy was started in 2008 by educator Salman Khan as a tutoring project for family members. Now, Khan's project is a full-fledged, non-profit serving students and teachers across the globe.

Offerings from Khan Academy include math, science, engineering, ELA, art, economics, grammar, test prep, and more. While it began as a math-focused project, it has broadened to include many other subjects.

It is funded by philanthropists and big brands alike with one shared goal: “to empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom.” Here’s why you should know about this resource, as well as a list of the best ways to use Khan Academy for remote learning.

5 ways to get the most from Khan Academy

There are so many online and distance learning companies and educational platforms available today. What makes Khan Academy different? Most notably, it is always free. Kids, parents, and teachers can access 100% of the content without paying a dime.

Because the site’s content is vetted (and in many cases taught directly) by the site’s founder Sal Khan, it’s all easy to understand, full of credible information, and appealing to learners of all ages.

Khan Academy supports pre-K learners through college and beyond. We’ve laid out 5 ways you can get the most from this free online education resource to help you, your child, or your student learn better.

  1. Learn how to use Khan Academy as a student
  2. Move toward mastery
  3. Search for individual skills
  4. Embrace electives
  5. Use all available Khan Academy resources

Khan Academy is brimming with information, videos, quizzes, and discussions, so it can be slightly overwhelming to know how to jump in and get the most out of it right away.

There are many tutorials and how-tos across the site for your convenience, but the best way we’ve found to harness the power of this global online learning tool is to follow these best practices. There are specific perks for classroom teachers as well, which we’ll cover later in the article.

1. Learn how to use Khan Academy as a student

One of the best ways to see all the perks that Khan Academy offers is to put yourself in the student’s shoes. There are many reasons for doing this, but the most important is that it helps you know how to communicate with kids when giving them assignments and sharing your expectations for their work.

Sign up for a student account and fill in the information as if you are a new student. You'll notice right away that parent permissions may be required, depending on the student's age. You'll also get a feel for how to log on, what the assignment dashboard looks like, and how badges and streaks work.

Since gamification is a major perk of the site, familiarize yourself with the award system to help you understand the thrill kids get when accomplishing mastery tasks.

Try some problems and be sure to get a few wrong. Note how easy it is to ask for help or find skill-specific answers. Take notes about your experience so that when you teach students later, you can present the information in a relevant way.

If you experience any frustrations, note these as well, and provide workarounds for students ahead of time.

2. Move toward math mastery

Prior to June 2020, Khan Academy allowed kids to learn and retain new math skills through their “Missions” program. This has now been updated to something they call “Mastery,” and it’s based on the theory that kids will retain information better over time when skills are repeated, even after they’ve learned them. Research supports the practice of mastery, and Khan Academy has built-in learning challenges to help students easily achieve mastery across all math grades.

In addition to standard quizzes and tests, there are self-paced Mastery Challenges that kids can take to make sure they still know the associative property, for example, even if they haven’t formally covered this skill in the past year. If the student doesn’t do well in the Mastery Challenge, they’ll level down, giving them more opportunities to work on this skill until they can pass the challenges without issue.

If they pass the Mastery challenge easily, this signals to Khan’s system that they may be ready to move on. Mastery is currently available for math, but Khan hopes to move this tool to other courses in the near future.

Note: Challenges can’t be assigned because they’re self-paced. But you can encourage students to try them when they can. There’s no way to mess things up by letting kids explore this feature. They can’t jump too far ahead and do Challenges for topics way above their proven skill level, and their Mastery opportunities are only available for their familiar skills.

3. Search for individual skills

What if, despite all of your live classroom time, numerous worksheets, and endless explanations, your student just can’t seem to grasp the idea of the Pythagorean Theorem? How can you support a child who needs to brush up on long division, when you don’t have the time to walk them through the process right this minute?

This is one of the more worthy features of Khan Academy. Searching for individual skills is easy to do, just by going to the top of any page. A search for “long division,” for example, brings up three predictive search results: long division, long division of polynomials, and long division with decimals.

You’ll also see many “top results” to choose from. You can easily see which one is best for your student’s situation by the video or lesson description. A quick glance will show you a video for long division with remainders, for example, right before one without remainders. Since you know the skill your student struggles with, you can pick the coordinating video for them to watch.

For more support, consider tasking them with the entire lesson including exercises and a quiz. There’s no harm to their grades in doing so, and it’s an easy way to give them practice, along with Khan’s signature wonderful math explanations.

Many kids find his way of teaching to be just what they need to get over the hump. You should also encourage students to search for help on any skill, at any time, as a way of taking responsibility for their own learning before coming to you to review a skill.

4. Embrace electives

Math is the most popular way to use Khan Academy, but it is far from the only thing this learning platform offers. When exploring the courses, consider how electives can take shape through the various video offerings.

With many school and homeschool budgets making it difficult to hire teachers for courses such as art history or economics, it’s nice to know that these are available as free Khan Academy courses.

Khan’s partnerships with other organizations provide some very unique opportunities to learners of all ages, including “Imagineering” with Disney (also called "storytelling"), where kids build their own theme park.

The Hour of Code is a top choice, too. There's even a personal finance course that covers paying for college, taxes, and how to calculate compound interest. Look for more courses to be offered in the future as Khan’s partnerships grow.

5. Use all of Khan’s resources

In addition to the brilliant courses that the platform offers, there are other highlights to explore:

  • Daily schedule samples with resources by age and grade, which is especially useful during at-home learning and for those new to homeschooling or self-taught summer school.
  • Hundreds of free books for summer reading programs or ELA enrichment, thanks to the Khan Academy Kids app.
  • A regularly updated blog that shares the new Khan Academy features, as well as best practices for managing classrooms, sharing resources, and more.
  • The comment section of each lesson, which allows you to see what kids are asking about each skill, as well as helpful tips from other teachers.
  • Test prep courses that cover the PSAT, SAT, LSAT, Praxis, MCAT, NCLEX-RN, GMAT, CAHSEE, and IIT JEE.

Even if you never use Khan Academy in a formal classroom environment and only pick and choose from the tools you like, there are easily years of content for learners of all ages to explore. Adults can enjoy many of the courses, too!

Extra perks from Khan Academy for schools

While the tips we mentioned can help anyone get the most out of Khan Academy, there are some very unique perks to embracing the site for classroom and institutional use. From distance learning newbies to longtime homeschoolers, consider these popular classroom uses:

  • Classroom management, including assigning of lessons, units, and tests, with the ability to see how each student is progressing on assigned goals.
  • Incorporation of tools, such as Google Classroom, to communicate lessons to students and get their feedback.
  • The basis for your own reward system that uses gamification to encourage kids and gives teachers a way to add bonus points to external grades, award gifts, or give classroom perks for badges earned.
  • Test-prep modules that save classroom time for those who need extra help with the PSAT and SAT, either for college admissions or as graduation requirements.
  • AP-based resources, taught by instructors who know the AP materials intimately, giving you another way for students to prep at home before they take their exam. Current offerings include AP courses in world history, art history, calculus AB/BC, statistics, macroeconomics, chemistry, and more.

Conclusion

While there are new distance learning options popping up every day, there are no other programs like Khan Academy in terms of scope, breadth, and affordability. The test-prep resources alone are incredible resources at your fingertips that easily rival paid alternatives.

Whether you use Khan Academy as a learning tool for your existing curriculum, or choose to embrace it as a stand-alone learning module, expect this resource to grow and offer more flexible ways for kids to learn in the coming years.

Related articles:

  • 5 Best Online Assessment Tools for Teachers
  • 5 Best Laptops for Home Schooling from HP
  • Tips for Communicating Online for Students and Teachers
  • 8 Tips for Parents to Help Kids with At-Home Schooling

About the Author: Linsey Knerl is a contributing writer for HP® Tech Takes. Linsey is a Midwest-based author, public speaker, and member of the ASJA. She has a passion for helping consumers and small business owners do more with their resources via the latest tech solutions.

5 Tips for Using Khan Academy for Remote Learning | HP® Tech Takes (2024)

FAQs

5 Tips for Using Khan Academy for Remote Learning | HP® Tech Takes? ›

Pro tip: Sign up for Khan Academy as a teacher, set up a “class,” and add your children. This will unlock access to our powerful set of free teacher tools. From there, you can assign lessons or homework to your children, give them due dates, track their progress, and see what skills they need to work on.

How to use Khan Academy effectively? ›

Seven tips for making the most out of Khan Academy
  1. Set goals for yourself. Keep a goal. ...
  2. Use Khan Academy regularly and make a schedule. ...
  3. Take notes, either on paper or on a computer. ...
  4. If you need help, consider asking the Khan Academy community. ...
  5. Make Khan Academy your own. ...
  6. Be patient and persistent. ...
  7. Have fun!

What are the benefits of Khan Academy? ›

  • A personalized learning resource for all ages. ...
  • Free tools for parents and teachers. ...
  • You're joining a global classroom. ...
  • From humble beginnings to a world-class team. ...
  • Anyone can learn anything.

How do homeschoolers use Khan Academy? ›

Pro tip: Sign up for Khan Academy as a teacher, set up a “class,” and add your children. This will unlock access to our powerful set of free teacher tools. From there, you can assign lessons or homework to your children, give them due dates, track their progress, and see what skills they need to work on.

Can you use Khan Academy as online school? ›

Why use Khan Academy for distance learning? It has high-quality content all in one place—Comprehensive, board-aligned practice and instruction content in K-12 math, high school science, English grammar, SAT prep, and many more.

How to get 100% mastery Khan Academy? ›

This can vary depending on the course, but for the high school level courses, you will likely have to complete the Course Challenge several times to reach 100% mastery of the course, especially if you have a lot of skills at the "Not Started" level.

How do you master skills on Khan Academy? ›

Each skill is worth a total of 100 Mastery Points. As you practice skills and answer questions in quizzes, unit tests, and course challenges, your level for that skill will go up (or down, if you miss any questions in the course). Moving to Familiar will earn you 50 of the 100 points.

What are the unique features of Khan Academy? ›

One of the key features of Khan Academy is the ability to set Course and Unit Mastery Goals. These learning targets aim to provide a clear path for your student's learning journey as they reach mastery of their content.

What are the downsides of Khan Academy? ›

With Khan Academy, students don't experience the nuances and complexities of a classroom environment. They don't receive feedback from the teacher or fellow students, nor do they get any personalized guidance. Another issue with Khan Academy is that it often does not align with the curriculum of a given school.

Why is Khan Academy a good source? ›

We at Khan Academy provide content aligned to the curriculum standards. Focusing on one skill at a time we bring to you a wide variety of exercises to test each skill. And these exercises can be attempted multiple times.

How do I use Khan Academy as a tutor? ›

Connect with your child
  1. If the child already has a Khan Academy account, they can simply add you as a teacher by going to khanacademy.org/coaches.
  2. If the child is 13 or older, they can go to khanacademy.org to create their own account and then add you as a teacher at khanacademy.org/coaches.

Can you use Khan Academy instead of school? ›

Students can use Khan Academy to fill in gaps in their education, get extra practice on skills learned in school, or accelerate their studies.

Can you use Khan Academy without a teacher? ›

Anybody can enjoy the content Khan Academy offers for free! You can even use your Google, Facebook, Apple ID, or personal email account to sign up.

How to benefit from Khan Academy? ›

Khan Academy has a library of standards-aligned lessons covering kindergarten through early college math, grammar, science, history, AP® courses, SAT® preparation, and more. Students can practice skills with exercises, quizzes, and mastery challenges and get immediate feedback and support.

Does Khan Academy teach everything? ›

Created by experts, Khan Academy's library of trusted, standards-aligned practice and lessons covers math K-12 through early college, grammar, science, history, AP®, SAT®, and more. It's all free for learners and teachers.

Can Khan Academy be used as a source? ›

Attribution: Per our license, you must attribute the material to Khan Academy, but not in any way that suggests that Khan Academy directly endorses you or your use of the materials.

How much Khan Academy should I do a day? ›

Keep things simple and set a goal of 2-3 hours of learning per day. Start with your child reading an hour a day and doing math practice an hour a day (and this time doesn't have to be all at once).

Can you really learn from Khan Academy? ›

Multiple Studies Show Khan Academy Drives Learning Gains: Evidence for Our Platform's Effectiveness. By Phil Grimaldi, senior efficacy and research scientist at Khan Academy. The evidence is clear—Khan Academy works.

What is the best way to get points in Khan Academy? ›

How Users Can Get Energy Points: Users can get 1500 (or 2100) energy points for completing a computer programming challenge in the Computer Science section. The difficult ones usually give more energy points. Users earn 750 energy points for each video watched for the first time plus 100 bonus points for completion.

How can teachers use Khan Academy in the classroom? ›

Assign videos, articles, and/or problem sets for your students to complete outside of class. Show me! In this model, teachers use Khan Academy as a frequent source for homework assignments. Grading homework assignments on Khan Academy is faster and more convenient than grading traditional paper homework assignments!

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