Khan Academy Best Practices for Science

Hi everyone, this is Jeremy Schiefflin with Khan Academy. Happy Friday!

We've now officially made it through not only the full week but a full month of all this, so please give yourself a huge pat on the back for surviving and progressing in the face of everything going on. I'm Vladimir, same to you as well. Um, and a special thank you actually to Vladimir here who is one of our all-star Khan Academy ambassadors.

So he is an AP Chemistry and AP Physics teacher based in West Palm Beach, Florida. Even though he roots for the Miami Dolphins and I'm a Buffalo Bills fan, I am still giving Vladimir mad love today because he is taking time away from his own students to make sure that you have everything you need to serve yours.

And so, as you know, if you've joined previous webinars, you can ask Vladimir questions at any point by typing into the questions feature of the GoToWebinar control panel. After we sort of talk through some of the basic stuff of Khan Academy, Vladimir will take your questions live and you'll actually be able to see on the site how he works his magic, how he gets his students engaged with chemistry and physics using Khan Academy.

So just let's start there, Vladimir. Tell us a little about your background as an educator and then how you got started with Khan Academy.

“This is my 21st year of teaching and I teach mostly AP Chemistry and AP Physics, but also do honors chemistry and honors physics, and from time to time I teach mathematics too. Which is becoming kind of nice; I like that too. But I have been working with Khan Academy, I guess, from the beginning.

And the reason why I started doing this is when I finished my doctorate degree. My doctorate degree is in educational technology and instructional design, so I kind of saw that this is where the future was going for us in education. I'll try to be concise. As a matter of fact, back in 2000-2001, when I worked for Palm Beach County Schools, we created a clearinghouse of materials free for all science teachers.

We actually began training teachers in science and mathematics to use the tools that we had just given at the moment, which was very crude back then. It was just kind of the beginnings of using PowerPoint in the classroom and using some tools in order to enhance the teaching of science and mathematics.

It was an easy transition for us in science because we had a lot of videos and a lot of different things that we could do that would have a visual representation of what we do in science, because sometimes it's incredibly complex to show. For example, let’s say a picture of an atom and people question how in the world do you see an atom? How do we know that it exists that way?

But then we can show mathematical models and we can show 3D pictures for the students to perhaps have a better understanding of a very abstract component of science and mathematics that we see from time to time. I've been using for a long, long time.

Yeah, pretty cool! And you're getting a little love here from April who says, 'Miami Dolphins rule!' Or as Janet says, she's a New York Giants fan, so she has no judgment, even though they tore our hearts apart in Super Bowl 25. But hey, that's ancient history now!

Okay, so that being said, let's cut to the chase here. I think folks right now are hurting in the sense that every educator in this country, every educator in this world frankly, is being forced to do things that they were not trained to do in most cases when it comes to remote learning using tools like this.

If you were just getting started today, if you didn't have the advantage of a track record with Khan Academy, what would you do if you were trying to serve your science students tomorrow or on Monday using a tool like Khan Academy? How would you start?

The way that I would begin is obviously there is a wealth of information that we can find online, especially when we need something that shows results and that is clearly delineated.

That it is already broken down by subject, not only by subject but also by topic, and that it has resources that also has a wonderful program, with the community where you can ask questions and there are a number of people who are involved who can answer any of your questions.

What I would do is I would begin just showing my students a basic understanding and creating a classroom in Khan Academy where my students can log on. Because it is a wonderful complement to any classroom. I've been using it for a long time and I use it in my AP courses all the time, and it's just being really a game changer in the fact that we can deliver education at any point in time where we can create courses, and we can create even assignments where the students can go at their own pace.

They can integrate into any of their courses because it perfectly aligns with whatever it is that you're looking for. To me, it is the best resource that I've used. That's why I got really excited about it and I wanted to know more, and I wanted to pass it on to other people. I have trained all of the science department in my school in the use of Khan Academy, and everyone is already using it to assign and create courses.

Just to use it as a complement for class, especially for AP courses, is just unbelievable. It really is amazing."

Cool, so I've shared that community resource with everyone in the chat. So if they want to talk to other Khan Academy ambassadors like Vladimir, they can do that through that group.

As far as talking to your students, it sounds like what you're saying is you might actually do a Zoom meeting or Google Hangout meeting with your students now, and actually just pull this up on your screen and say, 'Hey, here's Khan Academy. Here's what an exercise looks like.' And that way they can see it before you ask them to do anything, is that right?

“Right, well yes. I'm sorry I kind of went a little further. I'm kind of thinking of myself from the way that I have done it. No, but you're exactly correct and that is what I have told my teachers to the teachers that I have trained to do it. The first thing you have to do is you have to go with your students very easy maybe two or three days where they can have a basic understanding of the navigation and all the things that are available in Khan Academy.

But if you can set up a Google Meet, actually I think it’s called Google—they changed the name I believe right now—or Zoom. For example, if you can use that and go step by step and show your students how to sign up, how to find the resources, where the assignments are going to be located, but it’s actually pretty intuitive to use.

Once my teachers have used it for two or three times, they say, 'Oh, I'm old, so my students will probably get it in one or two tries!' And then it becomes a wonderful resource once they begin using it more and more. The more proficient you become at it, the easier it is going to be to integrate into your own classes.

Very cool! And so maybe you show them an exercise, which you can always find just by searching at the very top, so just as I did, I went up to courses and said, 'Show me the AP Physics content or the AP Chemistry content.' You can obviously search for anything in particular—so if you want to do thermodynamics, knock yourself out!

Right! Alright, absolutely! And then in terms of sort of getting students up to speed about the exercises, because in some ways that's the heart of Khan Academy, how do you recognize? How do you recommend that they tackle this? Do you say, 'Hey, just go through it and do it once'? Do you tell them to use hints or watch videos? How should students think about this?

Well, that's kind of an interesting question because I use it in a number of ways. One way that I found very effective a couple maybe about a year ago or so is that again now it's a little more complicated to do it because we're in a virtual environment. But I have tried it already and it actually works the same way that it would work in a classroom.

In Zoom, you can create small groups. Again, I'm not—I haven’t used Google Meet too much but I have done it in Zoom. For example, I assign a paper that's already pre-loaded into my Google Classroom assignments and my students know where to access that.

What I do is actually I watch the video on Khan Academy first and I get the exact same question that they have used. I use that question on just a Word document. What I do is I create the actual video link as a QR code. Once they begin answering the questions, we all do the question first in different groups and then we all come together again and we discuss the question.

When I ask them to do, after they have actually completed the question then we click on the QR code. Either do it on their phones or they do it straight on their computers, and then we can see how the question is actually done and then we talk about and we compare the answers.

My students really, really like that exercise because it gives a lot of confidence. Once they say, 'Oh really, I can't do this' or 'Oh this is what I went wrong,' maybe I need to go back and review what I did to make my corrections. So it works really, really well in that sense.

And just to give folks a sense of what's possible, in addition to the videos, if you want to actually look at some of those exercises together, you can come into your classroom.

So let’s say you've created a biology classroom or chemistry classroom, you come into your assignment section in your score section and you could actually look at those student answers as a class and say, 'Hey, I noticed that half the class got the wrong answer here. Let's talk about that, talk about the mistaken assumptions behind that and really tackle it as a class, as opposed to, 'You're on your own, good luck!'

Right, that's their way of explaining."

Yes, absolutely! 100% correct. Not only that, but I also like the fact that you can go into any of the assignments that you have given to your courses and you can pick an individual student and you can see for change.

Because I know some of my students, they say, 'Oh, Dr. B, I already know this question so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to watch the videos.' I say, 'Look, whatever you feel comfortable with, I'm going to be okay with that. But what I want to see is I want to see that you have actually watched the videos.'

Because that is how I'm going to be sure that you have actually watched them. It gives me statistics on the time that I have watched the video. So if a student tells me, 'I watched the video,' and I said, 'No, you actually only watched about 15 seconds of the video. That doesn't equate.'

So, 'Okay, okay, I'll watch it.' It's a good way to also hold them accountable for what they say they are doing. So it’s a wonderful resource, correct? Absolutely!

I'll just call out that in addition to scoring the exercises, you can actually tell on your end whether students have read the articles and watched the videos by looking for a green check under those kinds of assignments. Absolutely!

And that could even be an assignment on its own, right? Too, which I have done with my classes as well. I say, 'Once I see all the green check marks, then I know you have completed all of the assignments you need to do. So you're going to get full credit for that assignment. If not, then we have to go back and do it.'

And the good thing about it for the quiz is, they self-adjust. They are going to go with what the student is answering, and they have multiple times to—you can actually set it up that way—to answer multiple times instead of just one time to give them a chance so they can revise the question or review the question and then go back and answer it again.

So I do think that like ultimately the goal of Khan Academy is not just to be an assessment tool but to be a mastery-driving tool where we encourage students to have those multiple attempts and actually keep pushing themselves to really understand it at a deep level, not just emotionally.

Absolutely! 100% I agree with those sentiments, 100% on that.

Yes, cool! Okay, any other advice you want to give teachers at this point or should we head into the questions from the audience?

“I think we can take questions from the audience if I don’t want to take all the time explaining. I think it would be better if we just answer what their needs are going to be at the moment because I know that we have a number of people—you say are going to be on there right now, or on it right now. We have about 230 science educators across the country. So no pressure, Vladimir! But, Sandy says thank you for all that you do, you are amazing! So thanks for making this possible.

Similar love from April, even as a Dolphins fan. And let’s talk through some of the questions that are coming in here.”

Okay, so this is interesting. So, you're getting a question that basically says, you know, we've talked a lot about AP and like really making good progress and all that. If you have a special education student in your classroom, is there any way to differentiate using Khan Academy? Is there any way to make sure that every student is getting what they need, not just sort of lockstep for the entire class?

“Absolutely! 100% because Khan Academy is not only for—it's not designed only for the higher-level courses. It has every single level that you can imagine. It has from basic levels all the way to the very, very high-level AP. And you can access just any course that you want, also by grade.

Oh, it’s on the screen right now. You can answer this by grade, but you can access it at any level too. And the good thing about it too, again, is remember, you can make it so it is a self-paced guide that the students can follow and in their own time or in their own time frame, whatever that needs to be at the moment.”

Right now, I think we're all in survival mode and we're all concentrating on more on the learning than in the actual assessment piece. But that's where we are right now, so it will serve any student at any level, absolutely 100%.

Cool! And then just sort of build upon that if you said, 'Hey, I noticed that I have a student, no matter what their situation is, who needs to go back and sort of fill in some gaps from earlier in the year.' This could actually be a nice opportunity to do that and you can actually make assignments of specific pieces of content, not just to your whole class but the individual students who really need that support.

Correct! Correct! Absolutely!

Okay, so here's a related question from April. April wants to know how you do your basic, Vladimir, in terms of all these videos, articles, quizzes. Are you rolling them out, you know, several at a time? One a day? What's your cadence?

It depends on the course again, because I teach from regular levels all the way to AP. In my regular level courses and honors courses, what I do is I do maybe two or three at a time that they can watch and it depends also on the length of the video.

Some of them are anywhere between seven and fifteen minutes, let's say. So I want to find only maybe one or two a day. Because we have to be mindful too that their home is a completely different situation right now, and we want to follow our class because we all believe that our classes are the most important classes, right?

But we have to be mindful that they have other classes that they also have to meet with, other teachers, and not everyone is going to have the same level of comfort using the technology as of right now. And you probably are going through that right now, experiencing the same, 'Am I doing this correctly?' And the answer is yes, you are because nobody really has a definite guideline on how this is going to be maybe in a month or so.

We probably will be in this situation for until the end of the year, so face it any way that you wish, but be mindful again that they are going to be also having other classes and that might be a factor on how you space it out a little more.

Again, I'm cutting content. When I went—the first thing that I did when I found out that I was going to be teaching online, I said, 'Okay, let me see what is essential to me right now.' So I went back into my curriculum and I said, 'I can leave this out, I can leave this on, I can leave this out.'

The good thing is that also the AP sends us a shortened version of what the content was going to be for the exam and I had already finished covering everything, so that was a good thing. But for my other courses, I just went with the most necessary things that I need to do so that they at least can continue the sciences.

So you're going to have to make that decision yourself depending on your experience and also depending on what it is that you want to cover throughout the year.

Great, great! And one piece of advice I've heard from a lot of ambassadors in these webinars is just go slow at first. You know, don't try to like come out of the barn racing 60 miles an hour. Give yourself that time to build that foundation the same way you'd recommend for your students.

Correct! Another question from Katrina that’s actually very appropriate for this screen is, are the lessons on Khan Academy aligned with the NGSS standards?

Yes, yes, they can be! They can be, but for the most part, they do align. I absolutely 100% know that because I actually went through the alignment process when I did my courses. I wanted to make sure that everything I was covering was actually quoted on there, but a hundred percent, yeah.

I’ll give you a little sort of pro tip here. Not only does it have these citations throughout the lessons, but you can actually search by standard. So if you knew the exact standard you needed, you would come up here, you would paste it in, and then voila! You've got the exact piece of content that’s aligned with that.

Right, alright! Great question, one response! Ooh, wow, okay! Here is a really tough question for you. So Peter is saying, 'I work with what you know are typically called at-risk students who are sometimes difficult to engage in the classroom, let alone from a distance.

You know, with distance, every challenge is magnified.' He’s being really honest with us. He’s like, 'I often use food as a hook just a way to say, hey, come to my class, engage!' What is the best way to draw on my students given that I no longer have that in-person relationship to build upon? How do I keep them motivated in a moment like this?

That is a really, really tough question to answer again just because we're lacking that personal touch and that proximity and that connection that we did. There is no way that we can make the human connection through a computer. I know it's our best and I know that this is what we have been forced to do.

Okay, this is no one's choice. But, the way that I would say it is it is just keep asking your students, keep the motivation, keep the faith. You know, at the end of the day, at least in my 21 years of experience, I know that if I put my heart and soul into these things, my students are going to appreciate it and they are going to follow it.

You have to show them that you love the subject, okay? And that you care about them and that you appreciate what they do. Your students are going to care about your class once they know how much you care about them and about their future.

And I know I want—and I'm probably sounding very idealistic and dreamy right now—but you know, that’s just the way that I would approach. I will put my heart into it and just say, 'Look guys, we’re gonna have to do this, okay? This is just the way that it is going to do, and this is going to be important.'

Just to emphasize that this is going to be part of their future, that this is just the way that things are going to be right now, this is not always going to be the case, but just to keep going at it and to have faith. And that's a difficult piece just to bring the motivation factor into it again because we're not in the classroom.

In my classes, I'm very animated. I am very high energy and that is the same projection that I try to bring to the screen, okay? I try to make it that you know that we have to do this for them, okay? And it is about them, number one.

Yeah, I actually don't think that's idealistic at all. I think that's incredibly practical given the world we're in. To like lose hope and to sort of throw up our hands as educators is to ultimately drag, honestly, the whole classroom down and we have to stay strong.

I will give one very, very practical piece of advice that I've heard from other ambassadors. Just keep the lines of communication open and I know that's doubly hard with at-risk students because of maybe a lack of technological resources. But if you have access to texts or Remind or Class Dojo or just whatever it is, if you can let them know that you're thinking about them and you care about them, you want to keep serving them, I think that reminds them that, hey, they've got someone in their corner of the ring and that’s all every student craves right now.

Right, right! Cool! Okay, amazing advice. Here’s a really important question from Kathy because it speaks to the reality that a lot of teachers are going through right now.

Yeah, I know educators want to go online, they want to do things like Zoom or Google Meetings or whatever, but a lot of districts are actually forbidding it in the name of equity, saying, 'Hey, until we can serve all of our students, we just can't be doing live instruction.'

If Kathy is teaching in a district like that, what kind of advice would you give as far as how do you roll this out? Is it even realistic to roll it out if you can’t do a live walkthrough? If all you could do is like send an email or give a handout that said, 'Hey, go to khanacademy.org and do this lesson,' would that be enough?

I find that very difficult, and it’s kind of interesting you mentioned that because I actually had a phone call with a friend about a week ago and his school district actually said because of the inequality that we have, number one in technology and number two and in just providing the resources that we need for the entire county, the county decided actually to shut down the schools.

Because if it's not going to be equitable for everyone, then we cannot do it. I guess my understanding is that that came from the legal team of the county. And in that sense, I really do not have an answer.

Can you assign work that they can do on Khan Academy to continue? Absolutely, 100%. Because I do that every year, I say, 'Guys, if you want to go ahead, this is what I would suggest.'

Because I have a lot of my students who are very interested in continuing and say, 'Hey, what do we do after AP?' Well, maybe you can continue and do these things or maybe you want to look into it, okay? Maybe you want to continue and do your own self-paced course.

But other than that, I—that is a pretty tough question because most of the time, at least in my understanding, that came from a legal team saying, 'We cannot provide it because, it's not going to be equitable for everyone.' And again, right now the problem of the digital divide is 100 times amplified.

Even in my county, which is a pretty wealthy county in Florida, we're seeing the differences right now among the kids who have the technology and those who don’t have it. Those who have maybe one computer at home and also need to share one computer among five, six brothers and sisters at home, okay? So it's a complicated topic.

Yeah, I'll just give one very quick workaround. If you are not able to walk them through registration and giving assignments and all that, one thing you can do to keep it really simple is you can literally just send out the URLs for any piece of content on Khan Academy.

Yeah, so for example, if you want people to watch this video about human body systems or do this exercise about cells, you'll notice that in the very top address bar there's a unique URL that you could copy and paste into an email, into a text message, into a Remind app, and that way even if you can't walk them through the full experience, you can get your students working on something in the meantime.

You're not going to have tracking; you're not going to look at all the reports that we talked about, but at least it fills that void and gets them learning in this sort of period of limbo.

Right! Here is a really amazing and inspiring question from Sandy. So Sandy says, 'Vladimir, I’m working with 160 middle school students on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Talent is distributed evenly, but opportunity is not. How can I help the students that are now remote to engage in more hands-on activities with things they can easily find in their household?'

For example, she teaches math but she wants to integrate with the whole STEAM spectrum—maker space, robotics, flight simulation, snap circuits. How can she bring that same hands-on learning sense of excitement and engagement but do it virtually?

“Well, that’s a pretty interesting question because I am actually wondering myself how am I going to do some of the basic things that I have done with my classes typically, but now that they’re home, I don’t know if they have the materials that they need to do it.

And again, I cannot require them to go and buy anything right now. That would not be fair for me to say, 'Hey, go and find what you need.' Because I don’t want to put anybody at risk of contacting anything or being in contact with anyone who might be infected.

But you know, it’s a pretty tough question. Can I defer that to you, Jeremy?”

Yeah, absolutely! I was going to say that I have been really inspired teaching my own kids with the number of resources out there, way, way beyond Khan Academy.

They have super simple, like do-it-yourself home experience experiments. So, for example, this is super simple—this is for elementary school—but my daughters just dissolved the outside layer of an egg using vinegar, right? This was like the most mind-blowing moment for them even though it was just two things that we hopefully all have in our house.

I don’t know about the eggs anymore, given the egg shortage, at least the vinegar! And so hopefully that gives you a sense, Sandy, that if you just check out what’s out there on the web, I guarantee you’re going to find lots of other non-profits just like Khan Academy that are in the STEM space, that are offering resources like that.

And I would encourage you to discover them and then also share them in the Khan Academy community because I know there are other educators who are in the same boat.

Right! And I guess I found that one a little hard to answer because, again, I don’t work with the little ones. For example, for my students, I use a lot of simulations that are online that are wonderful, like the PhET Colorado—that is just a wonderful resource that has tons of different demonstrations for physics, chemistry, biology—but again, it's a little more advanced, geared towards the high school, college level type of student.

Great! Okay, so Elaine is going to ask a really good devil's advocate question. So we were talking before about this idea of doing multiple rounds on an exercise. So you take the first version of the exercise, maybe you only score 50, but you say, 'I'm going to push for mastery,' so I do it again and this time I get 90, I'm in that mastery range.

Elaine wants to know how do you know they aren't just memorizing the answers to get a better score versus actually achieving mastery?

Well, you know what? They—and we have wrestled with that question for a long, long time even before this. Because I have that question many times before and the answer to the question is going to be that as long as they reach the mastery level, and they are memorizing the questions, then I’m okay with that because it’s about exposure at the end of the day.

This is not the ultimate determination of their grade or their ultimate determination of the knowledge that they are going to have, but I tell them too, 'Guys, you need to go through this exercise and you need to do it honestly and you need to do it in a thorough way because at the end of the day this might fall into intellectual suicide if you don’t do it.

You might be thinking, 'Yes, I’m going to do it because I’m going to copy the answer,' so I’m just going to ask my friend what is the correct answer. But when it comes to answering the test, that’s when you're going to prove to me that you either did it or you didn’t do it.

A lot of times the students are going to be pretty receptive to that honesty. You’ll say, 'This is for your own benefit, and this is the reason why we’re doing this.' So whether they do it and they go over again and say, 'Oh, this is the answer to the question,' at least they know what the correct answer to the question is going to be.

So they are being exposed to what the correct answer and the correct procedure or whatever the question may be. So in that sense we have to have just a little bit of a—what’s your trust in that they are doing it correctly?

Now, is this going to be done 100% of the time? No! But most of them are actually going to do it in an honest way, in my experience at least.”

Very cool! And I will also mention that Khan Academy is not just showing the same four questions over and over again for every single exercise; that's drawing from a question bank. So, yes, the student could memorize the answer to all 12 questions going through the multiple rounds, but you'll see that they did it seven or eight times, which will probably be a tip-off of what's happening.

So definitely take advantage of the breadth and depth of the content as well as just that first iteration.

That being said, I know we're almost at time here, so for the folks who didn't have their questions answered today, what other resources would you recommend for getting support?

It sounded like the Khan Academy community was important—anything else that you would turn to to get advice or expertise from Khan?

The community is a great resource, obviously! The website is a great resource and it's just a number of things that you actually can do as an introduction to new material. That’s the way that I’ve used it from time to time.

I told my students if you guys are going to start, for example, thermodynamics, I want you to watch these two videos before you come to class because I am going to begin with a discussion of why heat flows the way it flows.

You can use it to complement anything that you have in your classes. Again, as resources, remember the ability to integrate into any course too. It’s just a wealth of information. As a matter of fact, you're going to have to cut down on some of the information because it's so extensive that it could be overwhelming if it's the first time that you see it, and maybe some of the things might not be appropriate for your classes.

It is wonderful to use as an assignment, as a practice guide, getting ahead, that’s—you name it! Also, the SAT program that a lot of people know about, I guess I have people who I have trained in Khan Academy and they said, 'Wow, I didn’t know they had an SAT program. They can follow and actually assign this to my students!'

It’s an assignment! I say, 'You guys have to complete this once a week; you have to show up.' And I do a weekly assignment on SAT, and at the end of the year they're just thrilled about, 'Wow, thank you for giving us a resource because it was just a wonderful resource.'

But these are just some of the ways that I have utilized this and I'm sure that many other ambassadors and many other people have used it to have many different ways of using it. But again, every time that I have a question that I do not know how to answer, I immediately go to the community resources and I type the question, and the number of answers I get is just wonderful.

It’s very helpful and people will answer your questions. It's just a great, great resource.

Very cool! And I think that's actually the perfect note to end on, which is not only is there this amazing community out there, but there are folks like Vladimir who are sharing their own expertise and paying it forward to the next generation of Khan teachers.

So Vladimir, thank you so much for doing that—exactly that—for our entire audience of science educators today.

“Thank you! Thank you! I appreciate it! Thank you to everyone out there for investing time in today's session. I know it's been a long week, it's been a long month, I know there's a long road ahead, but we're getting there. We're taking one step at a time and the fact that you shared this time with us today says a ton about your commitment to your students and serving them incredibly well.

So thank you for all that you do! Thank you again, Vladimir! And here's wishing everyone a peaceful and relaxing weekend!”

“Thank you so much! Can I do one more thing before we go? If it's any way, because I know I have people who tell me, 'Can you give us your contact information?' Is that even appropriate to say this is my email? If you have any questions, you can email me and I will try my best to answer your questions or would that be something that is not...?”

“Yeah, yeah! If you're comfortable, I'd be happy to share that in the follow-up email if that's okay!”

“Sure, that would be great! That would be great!

Wonderful! Well, Vladimir again has gone above and beyond, so if you have questions directly about AP Physics, AP Chemistry, or anything else STEM-related on Khan Academy, Vladimir, you have totally done an incredible service here. So thank you again!

Thank you everyone else out there. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Thank you! Thank you, too! Bye all!”