Khan Academy Review

Khan Academy’s mission is to provide free, world‑class education for anyone, anywhere. In keeping with that mission, Khan Academy holds itself to exceptional content standards. However, a necessary part of providing free education for anyone is translating content into many different languages.  While the efforts associated with translating content can take hundreds of hours and possible repetition, it is necessary to achieve Khan Academy’s goal of ensuring that everyone has access to a high-quality education.

In a situation where a content creator decides to revise how a previously translated course is taught, there are certainly a few key conversations to hold internally. Firstly, I would speak with the content creator to understand why he or she would like to revise the course. I would seek to understand what the content currently offers, what incremental benefits could be achieved with the update, and what ensures that this will be a higher quality offering. I would also be curious to know what compelled the course creator to make updates – particularly if it was feedback from previous participants. I would also speak with members of the content team to discuss feedback in this particular offering. I would ask if we had received any reviews from users regarding the translated course and whether there were any complaints or comments about how the course was taught.

Finally, I would speak with the translation community. Having the translation community on board with the possible change is of the utmost importance. I would explain the reasoning for the change and why, after speaking with the content creator, I am confident this update offers better quality content. Approval from the team is crucial. An updated course without translations results in a portion of students without access to the content in their language, contradicting a principal idea behind Khan Academy.

With the support of all stakeholders, I would proceed with the update. I would likely recommend initial reviews of updated content with representatives from content and translation teams to assess teaching quality party. If there was valuable user feedback or recommendations from the initial course offering, those changes could be incorporated with this update, to prevent further duplication of translation efforts. Pilot sessions with students familiar with the former offering could be held for a standard of comparison to confirm that this update is indeed valuable. Satisfaction metrics could then be aggregated from these pilot students and provided to the content and translation teams. These initial reviews and pilot studies would be held before the content creator completed the entire update. This would provide the content team with confidence in Khan Academy’s consistent world-class education, as well as further justification for the translation community’s additional hours of work.  Once the update is completed, I would recommend leaving the initial offering online internationally and uploading the new offering in English in the interim. This would provide the translation community with time to determine its other, possibly more pressing, priorities and capacity for translating this updated offering.