Making Computing Fun Again: Passion, Beauty, Joy, and Awe on Khan Academy

Presented at SIGCSE 2016 for PBJA session. See this Dropbox for other panelist's slides: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5ka53m1u508coig/AAA-WhmFgcHDaCqSne8mFvhua?dl=0

Transcript

1. Making Computing Fun Again DISCOVERING PASSION, BEAUTY, JOY, AND AWE ON KHAN ACADEMY
2. Why do I care? 2 Me, discovering computing… …AKA discovering how darn fun it was:
3. 3
4. How it started: The real-time environment 4 ACE editor JSHint ! BabyHint ! Loop Checker ProcessingJS
5. …and look what they made! 5 BEAUTY-fUL!
6. Next step: An interactive curriculum 6 talk-throughs challenges Drawing Variables Animation Text Functions Logic Looping Arrays Objects
7. Self-paced 7 DON’t STIFLE the passion! https://medium.com/@pamelafox/let-students-learn-programming-at-their-own-pace-dc18cb23e131#.xb76c6pjm “I used Khan Academy because allowed for differentiation between students. I love how it allowed our valedictorian and our lowest ranked student to coexist in the same class without either getting bored." progress in a class after 5 hours:
8. Finally: Deeper learning with projects 8 + peer evaluations from this… …to these! JOY! "The projects are fun and lead to ideas for more projects.” "I LOVED evaluating projects." "The projects really challenged me & forced me think about the skills I'm learning in order to apply them." …and struggle!
9. Improving the curriculum: talk-throughs 9 BEFORE AFTER quantitative qualitative + council of elders
10. Improving the curriculum: challenges 10 quantitative qualitative
11. 11 Hopper (...is a HER!) Winston Oh Noes Guy, the Error Buddy The whimsy! JOYFUL! JOYFUL!
12. 12 Community & collaboration Content questions Help requests
13. Sharing & discovering programs 13 Awesome!
14. 14 wow! Contests & clubs
15. 15 Does this approach work for everyone? • Gender: Yes! 60%/40% male/female student ratio, with equal completion rates across genders. • Age: Varies. <1 2 years old have lower completion rates, especially as course gets harder (e.g. logic). Adults have lower retention rates, due to getting busier or not finding it practical enough. cs-blog.khanacademy.org/2014/03/challenge-completion-across-gender-and_4.html