The Scene staff
Every year, Forest Park offers remedial classes for students who need extra help. Some find themselves taking three or four classes before earning the required credits for their majors.
But recently, I found a way to get around this. It’s called the Internet.
I have been using the Internet, mostly a website called Khan Academy, to get ready for some of the rigorous mathematics classes I will be taking in the spring as an economics major at University of Missouri-St. Louis, and the experience has been great.
I took college algebra a couple of years ago, but I have used the site’s videos and exercises to brush up on my skills. Now, I am beginning to re-learn trigonometric concepts I learned my senior year in high school.
Doing math at my own pace has not only been cheaper, but way more fun. It has begun to feel less like a chore, and more, dare I say, like a hobby.
The site’s math videos explain and demonstrate concepts ranging from basic addition to differential equations. It also has science, history and economics videos.
Hedge-fund manager Sal Khan started Khan Academy in 2006 after using a different online tool to help his younger cousin with math problems. He began making YouTube videos, which other people watched.
Today, Khan Academy is a gigantic non-profit corporation that has received millions of dollars in donations from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.
Forest Park assistant math professor Deborah Char began using Khan Academy this year for students in the MoHealthWins program, which provides training for students in medical therapeutics and health informatics.
They watch videos and do exercises online before Char tests them.
“When a person in a regular class is going at the pace of the class, they can’t slow down or speed up,” she said. “When they are doing something like these videos, they can watch (one) 12 times if they want.”
Char says success rates for students in MoHealthWins are noticeably higher than those for students in regular classrooms.
“You can’t attribute it all to Kahn, but it’s one of the components,” she said.
Websites such as Coursera or EdX that offer massive open online courses are also great tools. Both have more structured approaches to learning than Khan, with classes offered throughout the year from top universities, including Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The sites offer basic courses such as algebra and biology, as well as more esoteric offerings such as Coursera’s “Think Again: How to Reason and Argue” or “Introduction to Musical Improvisation.”
In addition to self-paced learning, the sites may make headway for a teaching method known as the “flipped classroom.”
This consists of students viewing lectures online at home and using class time to ask questions and do activities. In 2010, Clintondale High School in Clinton Township, Mich., flipped every ninth-grade class. Failure rates dropped from 52 to 19 percent in English and 44 to 13 percent in math.
By 2011, every class had been flipped, and college attendance rose from 68 to 90 percent. If the flipped-classroom model continues to succeed, education may look very different in the next couple of decades.
So don’t wait around for your teacher to explain everything to you. You have the power to learn about the French Revolution or how to use a semi-colon; you just have to put in the work!