Principle of Organizational Management LE02

Khan Academy – Educating World

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. The website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,200 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics,history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics and microeconomics, and computer science.

Mission: Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

Who is Khan?

Khan speaking at the TED conference in 2011

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in an Indo-Bangladeshi family khan was raised by his mother in New Orleans. Salman Khan holds three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: a BS in mathematics, in electrical engineering and computer science as well MS in electrical engineering and computer science. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. So he is quite an interesting personality to be write about. But what he did earlier is nothing in comparison to what he did by founding Khan Academy.

The Birth of Khan Academy

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube.  Then something interesting has happened. The feedback he got from his cousins and friends is that they preferred him on YouTube than in person which actually makes sense because a video can be paused and repeated many times. This gives flexibility to beginners who are perplexed with class room teaching. May be they could not catch the teacher's pace or they could caught up with some other stuff in class rooms. This encouraged him to take this social cause forward. Now this project is funded by donations. It receives fund from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and Google. Google has listed it as top 10 ideas having potential to change the world. Lot of people have donated big amount to the organization.

Learning management from Khan Academy

Theory X and Theory Y Learning

Khan Academy is fine exampe of theory Y concept. According to manager of Theory Y Employees are willing to work. Same as that Khan Academy thinks that no matter how slow the student might be but he is always willing to learn. What he requires is a proper guidance and pace.

Appropriate Use of Skills:

1.         Technical Skills:-

• Khan uses his technical skills of website designing, knowledge of high schools subject and his analysis experience for making Khan Academy possible.

2.         Human Skills:-

• Khan knew that learning ability of every students are different and thus develop a course to satisfy global needs.

3.         Conceptual Skills:-

• Khan has sound knowledge of high school subjects and basic concepts.