How well you actually learn something?

Back in the summers of 2004, a 12 year old kid had come to spend her vacations at her cousin's place. This kid used to bicker and backer about basic elementary math and had vowed not to take math at the high school. A worried mother spoke her heart out to the cousin and asked if he could do anything? This cousin of the young kid started teaching her over the phone and things went alright. As few days have passed, there started creeping in fatigue and other factors which made this learning over the phone unproductive. 

One fine evening when the cousin was having dinner with his old friend from college, he suggested him to make videos and post them over YouTube. Gradually the hits on the videos increased and noticed hits from unknown people, who by distance were not related to this gentleman. He was perplexed as to how come this is possible? 

No points for guessing who the cousin was! Yes, we are talking about the dynamic Salman Khan. A pioneer, who is an MBA and double Masters in Science from the coveted Harvard Business School (HBS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), respectively. He had a vision in mind, "changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere". Below is the MIT 2012 commencement in which clearly states the vision of his organisation. 

MIT 2012 Commencement, Courtesy : YouTube

What is Khan Academy all about? 

Khan Academy (KA) is an innovative resource which challenges the conventional way of education system by providing world class education, anywhere and everywhere free of cost.  KA boasts a collection of around 4,500 videos spread over the domains of elementary math to college level science with a hint of humanities and soft skills courses too. Below are few numbers which are mind boggling. Have a look! 

• Around 5 million unique students have watched videos over KA last month.
• Every month there are around 80 million lectures delivered.
• Till date, there have been around 260 million exercises completed

On a different note, Sal (as he is more often known as to the Silicon Valley) says that KA has taught more students than what HBS has taught till date from the time of its inception. Which is like WOW!! 

What triggered Sal to upload his tutorial videos? 

It was around 2006, when Sal started approaching his close friends and relatives and started offering tuition for their kids. There were times when Sal found the entire teaching process as mundane and wished why was he required every single time to teach the same stuff to different kids. These students had many doubts but they couldn't ask him as the kids had a preconceived notion that the teacher would be judgmental about their understanding. Say for example, "Oh! you can't even understand this??" 

He then decided to put up the videos on YouTube. One of his students left him a note that, "It's better to have you in video, rather than having you in person". This made him believe that students require a different way of learning things, unlike the elementary way of learning. 

Difference between the thought processes of the two systems

What do we learn as Managers till now? 

There are two very important things which we can learn till now. 

• Never blame the top most person of any organization, rather dig deep and analyse the root cause of the problem
  How do I support this statement in the above context? Say, we need to build a house of three floors. We are there with the plot and lay down the foundation. Now, contractor says that the work done is around 70-80% and it will do, lay start the work with the next floor. The same thing we apple for the next floor also and ultimately when we are erecting the last one, the entire house falls down. Now, whom would you blame? Contractor on the top most floor or the foundation one? 
  
  The same goes with education, when the fixed features are the ones which are with the traditional system highlighted in the image above, problems like these are bound to happen. You got to have the fixed feature as, "How well do you learn the stuff?". Only then you can have satisfactory results. 

• Optimization of the most scarce resource
  
  How effective a manager is? This is a trait which every organization looks for in a manager. In this context, the most scare resource is the time for the human being, that is the student here. Now, if we can maximize this, then we can do wonders. So, KA has developed resources through which it has optimized the "student to valuable time ratio".
• Human potential is immense, you just need the right tools to harness it
  
  According to a survey conducted, in a class it was observed that there was a student who was doing very bad at math. Now, the traditional way of education had forced him to consider himself good for nothing. But then the very same student when was given the liberty to study the subject at his own pace, only motive being that how much he learns. The results were surprising. The very same student after a period of 6-7 months had topped among the same set of students. What can we infer by this survey? Every individual (student here) has  the same potential, you just need the right person who can act as mentor to him/her and harness the same.
  
  If we stretch this example to the previously learnt Theory X & Y type Managers and the available workers to him. We can say that no matter what set of workers a manager gets, its always the Manager who can drive the results. He has to approach the situation with a Theory Y type of mindset. 

What do we learn as Budding Entrepreneurs?

Salman Khan was working with a successful hedge fund company. He started imparting telephonic tutorials and slowly he started with video tutorials for his cousins. One day he finds a need to upload these videos over the Internet. He starts getting multiple hits on his videos which excites a social servant within himself. He then decides that, whether I remain on not, my videos should and they should do some benefit to the society. So, he quits his jobs and starts a Non Profit Organization which will educate the students for free, everywhere and anywhere. Somewhere down the line, he had a belief that he would be able to lure financial supporters. With this intent he quits his job full time and sticks to his organization. 

Weeks passed by and still there were no financial support for this brilliant idea. Though he knew what he was doing, but then too for a minute he thought of updating his resume and hunt for job. he used to get donations of few dollars now and then bu then that wasn't enough to carry on this NPO. 

One fine day, he finds a donation into his Pay Pal account of $ 10,000, which is a huge amount of money. He contacted the lady who donated the amount and she finally set him up a meeting with "The Bill Gates". Slowly, things were starting to look brighter. Big players like Google, Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation roped in and rest you know is history. 

Key Learnings 

• One should always have a bigger picture in mind when you come up with a venture. There should be long term thinking. Here, he wanted to impart free and world class education to students all around the globe, irrespective of the profits to be earned. 
• One has to back his/her instincts and shouldn't just give up.