Olico Network

November 28, 2016 By Andrew

OLICO’s FREE online maths for Grades 7, 8 and 9

OLICO is thrilled to announce the launch of our GRADE 7, 8 AND 9 ONLINE MATHS PROGRAM which is now officially open to the public.

REGISTER FOR FREE: LEARN.OLICO.ORG

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OLICO’s online maths tool has been in development for nearly 5 years and contains over 20 000 unique interactive maths questions and 330 tutorial videos. This maths content is aligned to the South African CAPS-curriculum and rooted in the South African context.

Developed by Dr Lynn Bowie and a team of experienced education specialists, OLICO’s online maths tool is a useful supplement to learners, teachers, tutors or parents tackling grade 7, 8 and 9 mathematics. Says Lynn, “In grades 7 to 9 learners need to make the crucial transition from working with number and shape to laying the foundations of algebra and geometry. For many learners, the time and support available in school hours will simply not be sufficient to do this so OLICO’s online offering is one way in which we can supplement the work of the teacher.”

OLICO is calling on schools, teachers, after-school centres and NGOs who are interested in collaborating on this project to make contact. A core desire of OLICO is to develop and support a resource that is useful for teaching both in the classroom and in an after-school environment.

January 1, 2015 By Andrew

OLICO Youth Academic Report (to Oct 2014)

OLICO Youth continues to explore the effectiveness of computer-based mathematics solutions with a group of South African township-school youth. This year, sixty-five learners from Diepsloot between grades 7-10 are participating on the programme. Between Feb and Sept 2014, OLICO learners attempted over 76,609 maths questions and achieved an average 35% increase in basic number sense as well as an average 47% increase on foundational curriculum content. The focus now shifts to improving the speed at which learners progress through these lessons and improving the retention of newly-acquired knowledge. OLICO is committed to finding a genuine solution that is effective, sustainable and replicable.

Introduction OLICO Youth is a community-based academic support programme for township school youth with a focus on senior phase mathematics. The aim of OLICO Youth is to provide learners with a pathway into high school mathematics by bridging the gaps in foundational understanding, thereby serving as a conduit into algebra and geometry. There are currently sixty-five Diepsloot learners between grades 7-10 enrolled on the OLICO Youth programme. Learners attend 2 computer-based after-school sessions twice a week as they progress through the OLICO curriculum at their own pace. To remain on the programme, learners must attend at least 75% of their sessions and complete their homework assignments. Learners also attend on Saturday mornings for non-academic input.

At each mid-week session, learners follow OLICO’s 5-Step Process:

Arrive on time for scheduled session

Check in and show completed homework

Log onto computer with unique username

Follow OLICO’s 5 P’s

Check out and receive new homework

Learners work at their own pace once they log onto the OLICO learning management system. The personalised learning environment allows learners who score 80% or more in the short pre-lesson quizzes to skip these sections. Learners who achieve less than 80% however follow OLICO’s 5 P’s which is made up of the following:

Pre-Quiz

Presentation (video)

Practice exercises

Post-Quiz

Pause and review

The most pressing need for the majority of learners joining OLICO Youth is to substantially improve their general number sense skills and mathematical fluency. There are major challenges across South Africa in the shift from foundation phase mathematics (grades 1-3) to intermediate phase mathematics (grades 4-6) with most learners enrolling at OLICO Youth needing to catch up 2-4 years worth of content. Given this context, OLICO focuses on building foundational skills as a gateway to deeper curriculum level understanding. Key lessons to date:

Learners are highly enthusiastic about technology. There is little doubt that the computer-based approach leads to an increase in practice attempts, time-on-task, positive attitude towards maths and commitment to progressing through the lessons. The sheer volume of questions attempted by OLICO learners this year is impressive. In total, over 76,609 maths questions have been attempted this year alone… and counting.

OLICO learners achieved substantial improvements in their basic number sense abilities. Since February this year, 83% of the learners completed the number sense curriculum with learners improving by an average of 35%. The number sense curriculum includes timed exercises focusing on improving mental arithmetic with questions on: single/double-digit addition/subtraction; number bonds; finding differences; friendly numbers; multiplication and division tables.

OLICO learners also demonstrated substantial improvements on the foundational curriculum. Mastery for foundation-level topics is set at 80% since the lessons are fundamental requirements for future mathematics understanding. Learners are permitted to progress to subsequent lessons only once they have achieved this level of mastery. As a result, the speed at which learners progress through these lessons is an important additional indicator of effective learning. Given the amount of content learners need to cover, there is a need to increase the speed at which learners are progressing but, this concern aside, the results are impressive:

On average, learners improved on their pre-assessment results by a whopping 47%:

Equally pleasing is the progress of the OLICO learners who were part of the original pilot phase in 2012. These learners joined while in Grade 8. They are now in Grade 10 and have consistently improved their curriculum-level results. The grade 10 learners have displayed impressive levels of commitment, dedication and a positive attitude towards mathematics which is beginning to show in their results over time:

In addition to the clear benefits of an increase in the amount of question-attempts and time-on-task, technology also offers instant feedback to the learner which is particularly important for effective learning. Learners can thereby shape their personal learning experiences by responding appropriately to the cues provided by the computer.

Finally, the numerous advantages of technology do not replace the need for a skilled facilitator alongside a context-appropriate programme. At the very least, the facilitator must have a well-developed number sense in order to intervene when learners get stuck. Technology enables a good facilitator to interact and assess learner needs (with real-time feedback) on a highly individualised and targeted basis.

5 core focus areas going forward:

Over the forthcoming 6-9 months, the OLICO team is focused on finding ways to increase the speed at which learners progress through the OLICO lessons and thereby increase curriculum coverage.

The OLICO team is also placing a greater emphasis on regular checkpoint interventions to ensure and better assess knowledge retention.

Since English literacy remains a barrier for many of the OLICO learners, a literacy strategy is to be incorporated as core to the programme from 2015.

A new custom-designed database is being built to simplify the OLICO processes and reduce administrative complexity.

OLICO will continue to develop and publish open-source mathematics materials on our resources page and build a programme around Siyavula’s Everything Maths for our Grade 10 and 11 learners in 2015.

Conclusion: A significant amount of progress has been achieved over the past year, both in terms of learner progression through the OLICO maths curriculum and in the development of context-appropriate open-source content. There are strong positive indications that OLICO Youth is addressing a number of the deep-rooted foundational challenges facing SA’s learners. The key remaining challenge over the next 6-9 months is for OLICO to achieve progress on the “5 core focus areas” (as identified above). Success in this regard will determine whether the OLICO solution is indeed ready and effective enough to begin replicating in new environments.

Some programme background and history: Initially, the OLICO Youth project began by experimenting with freely-available online mathematics videos and exercises from Khan Academy. However, there are a number of challenges to using the Khan Academy platform for OLICO’s specific purposes and a decision was made to build OLICO’s own customised learning management system (LMS). The OLICO LMS thus pools together a variety of relevant open-source materials and the OLICO team has been developing additional content when context-appropriate resources do not already exist (published as creative commons). For the older grades, it also serves as a gateway into the Siyavula’s Everything Maths. The broader mathematics context: Although it is a very small sample, the profiles of the OLICO Youth learners reflect many of the broader South African mathematics challenges:

The nation-wide results of the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) provide clear indications that the majority of learners require significant remedial and foundational support in mathematics. The complexities of curriculum-level content increases greatly because learners are often still grappling with basic maths fundamentals. See also: SAHRC and UNICEF (2014) Poverty traps and social exclusion among children in South Africa. Pretoria: SAHRC.

The shift from foundation phase mathematics (grades 1-3) to intermediate phase (grades 4-6) appears to be particularly problematic. The transition has a deep impact on mathematics understanding as it involves a shift from additive reasoning to proportional reasoning; from concrete representations of numbers and concepts to more abstract representations; and from mother tongue instruction to English. For more on the difficulties in the shift to proportional/multiplicative reasoning, see: Hiebert, J. And Behr, M. (eds) (1988) Number Concepts and Operations in the Middle Grades, Vol 2. Research Agenda for Mathematics Education. NCTM; and Harel, G. And Confrey, J. (1994) The development of multiplicative reasoning in the learning of mathematics, SUNY press, Albany.

May 16, 2013 By Andrew

Article in Daily Maverick on OLICO Youth Diepsloot (Khan Academy pilot)

On the edges of one of Johannesburg’s densest urban settlements you’ll find a Diepsloot Community Centre, where locals can learn anything from welding to computer literacy. Unlike other community centres fraught by political infighting, this centre’s a hive of entrepreneurial and education success stories. One of these is the experimental OLICO Youth (Khan Academy) Maths initiative that’s having a big, positive effect on Diepsloot learners. By MANDY DE WAAL.

Click here to go to the original article as it appeared in the Daily Maverick.

Fourteen-year-old Rhoda Chitegha, a grade 9 pupil from Diepsloot north of Johannesburg, was struggling to pass maths until she discovered a small Khan Academy maths class at her local community centre.

“I didn’t understand most of the concepts in maths and that is why it was hard for me. There are about 44 children in my maths class in Diepsloot and you don’t always get a lot of time with the teacher, but since I have come here (to the Khan Maths project at the Diepsloot community centre), maths has become fun and I have learnt so many more things than I knew before. It is easy to enjoy maths here. There are videos to watch and people who will help you,” says Chitegha, during a break from her course.

The OLICO Youth Maths project operates from a connected computer room in a community centre on the outskirts of what is one of Johannesburg’s most densely populated urban settlements. The maths initiative started in April 2012 as something of an experiment, as an education layer built onto the Siyakhula Computer School, which teaches computer and internet literacy to Diepsloot residents. For a nominal fee that’s both affordable and enough to create a sustainable small business for a couple of local entrepreneurs, interested people can learn how to use Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Photo: Christine Ngwenya

Photo: Christine Ngwenya says her understanding of maths has improved greatly, thanks to the Khan Maths project at Diepsloot, and that her grades have improved as well.

The computer school is an OLICO Foundation project, a non-profit born out of the belief that by empowering people, poverty can be eradicated. A year ago the foundation kicked off a six-month experiment to see if free online learning solutions could change education outcomes in previously disadvantaged communities.

Forty-eight Grade 8 learners from Diepsloot enrolled in the pioneering maths project and twenty-nine completed the full six-month programme, increasing their averages by 22% when compared with pre-project assessments. Students were given basic internet and computer literacy because many, like Chitegha, had never been on the internet before.

“Basically what we did was to take the Khan Academy Maths curriculum, and then got some teachers from St David’s to contextualise the material as far as possible so that it is locally relevant,” says Andrew Barrett, a serial social entrepreneur with a major in philosophy, who has helped set up more than one successful community teaching initiative.

Barrett was involved with Ikamva Youth, an education and e-literacy endeavour that helps older (Grade 9 to 12) public school learners radically improve their marks so that they might gain access to tertiary education. Currently only some 10% of SA youth gain access higher education, SA Institute of Race Relations figures show. This can, in part, be attributed to the dual, unequal public schooling system that pervades this country. (Read A school journey into Eastern Cape’s darkest heart in Daily Maverick for more insight into
SA’s two disparate public school systems.)

Ikamva is now a well-run, sustainable organisation, which is why Barrett moved on to see what free online tools communities can harness to improve education outcomes. The pilot project with Khan Academy Maths is the first of these ‘experiments’ that will eventually be housed in a separate online learning community project called Olico.

Photo: Andrew Barrett

Photo: Andrew Barrett of OLICO watches children from Diepsloot tackling their maths problems and interacting with Khan Academy courseware online.

As a point of departure, a baseline maths assessment was developed by the St David’s teachers involved in the project. When evaluating learners from Diepsloot it was discovered that they are some 18 to 32% behind their peers at St David’s.

“Many of the children experienced a very pedagogical approach to learning maths, which has meant rote counting and multiplication rather than integrating mental arithmetic,” says Barrett. “This is a major barrier to getting learners to grasp maths concepts,” he adds.

“This isn’t a concern that’s unique to Diepsloot, but is part of a wider problem. When I’m in conversation with schools in townships in Cape Town or Thokoza, it’s the same issue. It is basically a legacy of the Apartheid system and what it did to primary school education,” Barrett explains.

“The problem with many public schools, which tend to be overcrowded, is that teachers must move on with lessons and can’t backtrack for students who can’t keep up or who have learning gaps,” he says. It is early days in the experiment yet, but the Khan Maths project appears to be filling learning gaps for Diepsloot learners with its fun, participative afternoon supplementation.

Something of a global education phenomenon, the Khan Academy is an online, open source teaching system built off a vision to provide anyone, anywhere with a free world-class education. Founded by a former hedge fund analyst called (Sir) Salman Khan, the web learning system that includes over 4,100 teaching videos was borne when Khan was trying to help his cousin with maths.

The MIT and Harvard graduate was tutoring his cousin maths remotely, using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad for the lessons, but soon relatives heard what was going on and wanted in. “The rest of the family heard there was free tutoring,” Khan tells the Guardian, explaining that soon even more relatives wanted to be included, and the demands on his tutoring time started getting out of hand.

A friend of Khan’s suggested that he start filming the tutorials and placing them on YouTube, which meant they could be accessed anywhere and at any time by his family members, or anyone else that was interested. “I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him,” Khan says on the academy’s site.

The YouTube site went live in November 2006, and today has close on a million subscribers, while the most popular videos are on basic addition (1,78 million views); simple equations (1,42 million views); and the beauty of algebra (over 800,000 views). Khan’s 2011 TED talk on using video to reinvent education has some 2,32 million views.

The Khan Academy video catalogue has expanded in recent years and now includes video and courseware on the sciences, including chemistry, physics and biology as well as some videos on finance and history. The approach is to chink learning material into video bits of about 10 minutes which can be viewed online.

What differentiates the approach is the courseware that accompanies the videos. There is a series of exercises the learners do after watching the videos to assess understanding of the concepts taught. Participants input answers to questions, and there’s a back-end interface where teachers or overseers view reports that display how the students are coping.

Barrett shows Daily Maverick the reporting function which has charts to track learner progress, and which enables tutors to quickly realise what concepts or equations or sets of problems maths pupils may be struggling with. This admin-type function is very granular and enables a macro- and micro-type view of progress. In addition to the back-end function, the online programme has hints and tips built in to nudge users along.

The idea is that a Khan Academy could operate anywhere – all that’s needed is a computer and an internet connection. A caring overseer with education experience is a bonus, but not a pre-requisite to progressing through the course.

At the Diepsloot community centre, students from the University of Johannesburg volunteer to assist with the schoolchildren, and are on hand to nudge the children along the Khan Maths course that has been tailored for the SA environment. “What’s remarkable about Khan Maths is that there is very little extrinsic motivation – the motivation is mostly intrinsic, which means that the children here are very self-motivated,” says Barrett.

There is a nominal charge for the tutoring – the cost is R50 per month for the after-school course, but Barrett says this hasn’t proved a barrier to entry. “What’s been important to us is to make this programme both sustainable and affordable, so that it can be replicated across the country,” says Barrett, who adds in this way it creates viable education supplementation, but also creates a computer literacy business for community entrepreneurs.

The programme has piqued the interest of Lynn Bowie, a lecturer at Wits University with interest in primary and secondary level maths. Currently studying for her PhD, Bowie teaches the teachers, and has committed her time to help developing the project. Part of a larger ‘open source community’ of educators, Bowie is helping teachers to create localised worksheets that are linked to the Khan Maths programme.

“What we’re looking at is using the Khan methodology to supplement the local curriculum as a means of developing a pathway for children to more easily close the learning gaps that they might have – gaps that could prove an impediment to their progress,” says Bowie. “Basically we’re looking at the different modules like algebra or arithmetic and then seeing how we can create these pathways so that students aren’t left behind in high schools like the one in Diepsloot,” she says.

For the children at the Diepsloot community centre, the programme has proved a triumph and hopefully could contribute to stimulating greater interest in, and success with that all-important subject, maths.

“My dream is to be a scientist because I am so curious about the world, I want to know everything,” says Christine Ngwenya, who is in Grade 9 and spends her afternoons at the Khan programme at the township’s community centre. “Because I want to be a scientist, maths is very important to me, but in primary school my maths marks were very irregular,” the teen admits.

“I kept dropping and going up in my marks. When I went to high school, my marks weren’t that good at all. I didn’t understand some of the maths that we were being taught, even as the teacher was talking. I heard the teacher but understanding the concepts he was teaching us wasn’t that easy,” the learner tells Daily Maverick, explaining that in class her maths teacher spends a fair amount of time getting learners to participate and try follow the curriculum.

“The teacher tends to draw attention to those who do not want to participate. Even if you want to participate but you don’t have the right answer, the teacher has his hands full trying to get the class to participate,” she says, and then describes her experience at the local Khan Maths classes as “adrenalin-pumping”.

“When I first came here I didn’t know about most of these maths things and concepts. It is great here because if you have a problem there is so much support, so you can ask and people take their time to explain things to you. And then there are the videos that we can watch, so everything gets explained which means I get to understand and the problems I have get sorted out straight away,” Ngwenya says.

“I love science – one day I want to fly in a space rocket so that I can see more than I have ever seen before,” she adds. Ngwenya has a bold dream, but thanks to this supplementary maths programme at the Diepsloot community centre, she has a much better chance of being eligible for tertiary education – and getting close to realising her dream. DM

Written by Mandy De Waal.

Khan Academy: The man who wants to teach the world at The Telegraph
Khan Academy founder on the future of teaching – Guardian video
This simple Khan Academy interface hack improved learning by 5% at Fast Company
Find Khan Academy at YouTube
Salman Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education at TED

April 23, 2013 By Andrew

Experimenting with Khan Academy in Diepsloot (Report)

In mid-April 2012, OLICO embarked on a 6-month experiment to gauge the effectiveness of freely-available on-line learning solutions with a group of South African township-school youth. Forty-eight Grade 8 learners from Diepsloot were enrolled on the program. Twenty-nine learners completed the six months with an average increase of 22% on their curriculum content compared to their initial pre-project assessments.

To download the PDF version of this report, click here.

Introduction:

In mid-April 2012 OLICO set out to determine whether there is evidence to suggest that computer-based content such as the freely-available Khan Academy could successfully supplement the mathematics education of South Africa’s township-school youth. Khan Academy is a free online repository of educational videos and exercises across a wide range of disciplines with a particularly extensive collection of mathematics content.

The OLICO project enrolled a group of 48 Grade 8 learners from surrounding Diepsloot high schools. The learners were provided with lesson notes (designed by educators from the mathematics department of St Davids Marist Inanda) that incorporated a selection of Khan Academy videos and exercises covering a range of topics on the Grade 8 curriculum. In total, the lessons covered approximately 15% of the national curriculum. In addition, learners were assigned paper-based homework sheets for each lesson and were required to complete tutorials and an assessment at the end of each module (comprising of up to 5 lessons).

For the first month of the project, learners received computer literacy training which included directions on basic email and internet usage and assistance with registering as a Khan Academy student. In addition, each learner wrote a baseline assessment designed by the teachers from St Davids. The teachers described the assessment as one upon which they would be very concerned if any of their own grade 8 learners scored below 40%. None of the Diepsloot learners managed to pass. The group average was 18% and the highest mark was only 32%.[1]

It was soon apparent that remedial work was required before the learners could continue with curriculum-specific assignments. In general, learners struggled with basic tasks such as “addition with carrying” or “subtraction-with-borrowing” and when asked to complete elementary calculations like multiplying 6 by 7, learners would draw 6 rows of 7 “sticks” and then count them. That such basic concepts related to times-tables knowledge and ‘mental maths activities’ were not previously instilled to these learners despite 8 years of schooling is highly troubling, but is precisely the problem that this experiment is attempting to address.

In formulating our approach we implemented a 10-Step-Process for learners to follow (the details of which can be found below). Local facilitators from Diepsloot were employed to ensure that learners were following this process. In the event that learners needed assistance, the facilitators were given strict instructions to refer learners back to the “Khan Academy” videos or exercise hints, as the facilitators themselves had limited mathematics skills to avoid contaminating the experiment.

It is encouraging that by the end of the 6-month experiment, learners achieved an average increase of 22% on the curriculum content compared to their initial baseline results. While this improvement only lifted the group average to 40% it still reflects significant progress and suggests that computer-based learning solutions like Khan Academy can indeed be effective in supplementing mathematics education.

Of particular interest is that every learner in the group showed a positive improvement on completing the assigned curriculum. No learner achieved less than a 10% increase with the movement of the group as a whole strikingly illustrated in the chart below.

As encouraging as these improvements are, it is unlikely that technology on its own is capable of delivering a solution to SA’s educational challenges, although it seems entirely possible that the proper application of certain kinds of technology has the potential to make a marked positive contribution. At the very least, the growing prevalence of technology in educational contexts across the spectrum offers increasing opportunities for collaboration and shared learning. It is in this spirit that we offer further details of the project below:

Infrastructure Involved

1 x computer laboratory with 20-networked computers with individual headsets.

We used NComputing L300-series terminals with a mid-level i7 desktop computer running Windows 7 Enterprise as a server.

Each learner works on their own computer. On the current model, 1 computer can serve 5 learners attending after school twice a week for 1 hour long sessions in the afternoons. With 20 workstations our current capacity is 100 learners.

Internet connection is required for Khan Academy exercises and learner progress-tracking.

We used a standard 3G connection since we had good network coverage. It was expensive although Cell C now have a 100GIG prepaid option for R2500 which we are using in 2013. There is also Khan Academy Lite which is designed to work offline as a self-contained solution to low-bandwidth problems.

We used approximately 12 GIGs of bandwidth per month.

The Khan Academy videos were pre-downloaded onto the server to preserve bandwidth usage.

Learner Selection Process:

48 learners from Diepsloot secondary schools enrolled in response to a once-off distribution of pamphlets to surrounding secondary schools.

The invitation was exclusively for Grade 8 learners. Interested learners were encouraged to self-select onto the programme. We discouraged schools and teachers from pre-selecting learners to avoid learners attending against their will.

Learners were informed they would be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis although this wasn’t implemented as we accepted all 50 applications we received (2 learners applied and were accepted but did not begin the program).

There was no prior academic merit requirement and no English comprehension assessment.

Commitment Required of Learners:

Learners were expected to attend at least two sessions per week of at least 1 hour per session.

The centre was open in the afternoons after school between 2:30pm and 4:45pm.

Learners booked their places in advance to ensure availability of computers.

We originally intended to run the pilot for three months and assess the situation thereafter, but extended this by a further three months as a result of the greater than anticipated need for remedial work.

Learners were required to attend computer literacy training with an emphasis on internet, email, browsing and the skills required to effectively navigate through the Khan Academy website.

At the end of the experiment, 60% of the learners completed all the modules assigned. The remaining 40% either dropped out or were excluded due to inadequate commitment levels. There was no learner retention strategy applied and those who did not meet the minimum requirements were simply excluded.

Pilot Facilitators:

The pilot facilitators were relatively low-skilled Diepsloot residents with instructions to follow the 10-Step-Process and direct learners back to the Khan Academy videos or exercise hints in the event that they needed help.

10-Step-Process

1. Learner arrives for pre-booked slot

2. Learner Checks-in with facilitator:

Marks the Attendance Register

Hands in Homework

3. Learner logs onto computer with unique username

4. Completes times-tables exercise (5mins)

5. Opens lesson on desktop and proceeds with video/Khan Academy exercises

6. Learner aims to correctly answer approximately 8/10 khan academy exercises in-a-row

7. Facilitator monitors progress and advises next step based on homework submitted & Khan Academy progress

Learner either revises lesson homework or begins new lesson

8. Time up – Learner ends session & logs out

9. Learner Checks Out

Collects marked homework sheet

Collects new homework sheet

Learner books slot for next session and collects sweet

10. Everyone travels home safely

Key Lessons to date:

Very little extrinsic motivation was offered to keep learners motivated and attending. None the less, 60% of the learners who enrolled on the project met the minimum attendance requirements with no retention strategy applied.

Perhaps the most important practical lesson we learnt is that learners need constant supervision to ensure they are on the correct exercise and watching the correct video. Khan Academy is a very open system, which makes it very confusing for our learners to navigate. Left to their own devices, with only instructions about which videos to watch and which exercises to complete, the learners were soon lost within the Khan system and attempting problems that were well beyond their capabilities. They did not have the prerequisite skills to understand where they were within the Khan system itself and how this related to what they needed to learn.

Learners also required considerable prompting to move on once they understood a concept. Learners had a tendency to remain on topics (or revert back to topics) on which they had achieved success – often completing far more exercises than necessary (sometimes hundreds of exercises and on occasion into the thousands). This may be partly explained by the built-in affirmation the Khan Academy site provides and the concomitant boost to a learner’s self-esteem when repeatedly getting certain concepts right. Their dedication to the task was admirable, but not correctly channeled when considering the amount of ground that has to be covered.

Learners often don’t have the basic background knowledge to understand the concept that they are currently studying. Here we need to look at adequate testing to identify prerequisite knowledge before a particular new concept is attempted.

Since learners are only able to attend two sessions a week at the centre itself, the development of homework material to be used between the computer-based sessions is vital to the success of the program.

To improve the impact of the Khan Academy videos, learners benefitted from pre-prepared worksheets that corresponded directly to the examples in the Khan videos they were watching. Learners were asked to attempt the exercises prior to watching how they were completed in the video.

The Khan Academy videos are generally useful, although there are a number of limitations, most notably the following:

Some videos confused South African learners with references to specifically American themes like dollars, quarters and dimes.

Certain mathematical mechanisms are different too, for example Khan Academy uses the mnemonic, ‘PEMDAS’ whereas most South African schools use ‘BODMAS’.

Some of the terminology in the videos is confusing for non-first-language English speakers, e.g. the use of word “parentheses” instead of “brackets”.

Some of the videos are focused on procedural skills and not on conceptual knowledge. This appears to be a common critique of the Khan Academy videos although possibly overstated.

A number of the videos are out of sync with the corresponding exercises. For example, certain videos explain a difficult mathematics skill, but the linked exercise is very simple, and vice versa.

Provision will need to be made for sections of the South African curriculum that are not featured on the Khan Academy platform.

By registering as a coach on the Khan Academy website, the facilitators are able to monitor the progress of learners in real-time and examine progress on a sum-by-sum basis. The coaching dashboard is very useful but not particularly user-friendly when trying to monitor a number of learners simultaneously. For example, there is no way to filter learners according to those currently logged-on. We’ve since discovered Always Prepped offers a more intuitive layout for higher-level monitoring of individual learner progress.

For future development, a better pre-assessment is necessary to determine a learner’s prior mathematical ability and to establish an appropriate entry point to the Khan Academy. As stated previously, learners often needed to return to very basic concepts to establish a good grounding.

Translations / Other examples of Khan Academy Projects in South Africa:

The University of the Cape Town, Click Maths and Numeric have translated a number of videos into isiXhosa. Find the Xhosa content here. We used only the English videos in our experiment but it will be interesting to see what impact this has in the future particularly with rural learners.

Numeric is currently using the Khan Academy with a variety of groups and schools in the Western and Eastern Cape. The Numeric website is full of useful tools and tips for anyone wishing to experiment in their own South African context.

The process involved in the OLICO experiment above is slightly different to that of the Numeric approach in that Numeric focuses primarily on Khan Academy as a group activity. This has the potential advantage of fusing a strong social bond amongst learners and is also likely to further promote peer-to-peer learning, a much under-rated educational tool as we discovered during our time with IkamvaYouth. The approach described in the OLICO experiment however is designed specifically for learners to proceed at their own pace. Correspondingly, this has the potential advantage of ensuring that quicker learners are not held back by struggling learners or those who are struggling need not be left behind when a group moves to the next topic.

There is no doubt in our mind that there is considerable merit to both approaches.

Next Phase Questions:

During the next stages of the project there are a number of questions still to be resolved including, but not limited to the following:

It would be interesting to compare the improvements displayed by the group to the progress (or lack thereof) of a control group.
Of particular interest is how we design a pathway into algebra that ultimately equips a learner to take Pure Mathematics (as opposed to Maths Literacy) when selecting subjects at the end of Grade 9?
It remains an open question as to whether there is a minimal level of prerequisite skill required for Khan Academy to be effective; how we measure this; and how we bridge this gap?
A key element is therefore how we most effectively test a learner’s prerequisite knowledge before proceeding with a particular Khan exercise?
There are issues pertaining to how best to contextualize the Khan Academy aspects that are not suitable to the South African context?
And finally, given that we have had learners beginning at extremely low levels of knowledge, can computer-based solutions like Khan Academy also move learners up from 40% to 60% or higher?

Sustainability Factors:

Currently the funding for the project comes from private donations and corporate sponsorship. We have begun experimenting with additional income-generating opportunities, including a low-cost learner fee similar to how we operate our adult education programs. It’s important to note that this fee is not for access to the Khan Academy (which is free), but to cover the operational costs of the local facilitator, lesson notes and the centre. There will of course be a number of learners who cannot afford even a low-cost option and we invite learner sponsorships to either supplement or fully cover the costs.

In addition, the operating costs of the centre are supplemented by using the computers in the mornings for additional income generating activities. These include: adult education, post-matric bridging year programmes and IT/internet services for community members.

Commitment to Creative Commons and ‘Open Source’ Content:

Any lessons learnt, notes developed, processes implemented or software built will be published under the creative commons licence and we hope to learn as much from others as from our own experiments. The invitation is thus for everyone to participate, either in an implementation in a local environment or through further development of the programme content itself. The long term vision is to contribute to a network of individuals and groups around the country working together to keep the content current and adapted to the local situation.

Any queries or comments can be directed to Andrew Barrett: andrew@wearegrowing.org.

[1] This is indicative of the wider deficiencies within the South African education system which ranks 139th out of 144 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Global IT Report. South Africa also ranks second last in maths and science education. See: http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology.

For information on Diepsloot, we highly recommend Anton Harber’s book Diepsloot.

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