Khan Academy has expanded from just creating videos to include a whole platform through which students can move through the content, including analytics for teachers and parents to track them. And to motivate students to do more, Khan Academy has included what's become quite a common feature of most Web 2.0 apps: badges. There's a Meteorite Badge, Moon Badge, Earth Badge, and Sun Badge, for example.
Now Khan Academy can hardly be chastised for giving students rewards like this. The whole letter grading system is "gamification of learning" to some extent. But as some people have found, this sort of reward system on Khan Academy may encourage completion of material for the sake of badges, rather than for the sake of learning itself. At the Los Altos USD, one of the places where Khan Academy is being piloted in the classroom, teachers note, "The problem here is that sometimes people rush through the exercise without learning it just to get a badge. The creators of Khan Academy added badges to make it more interesting and motivating, not to make you ignore everything else and just aim for the badges."
started by salma1504 on 18 Oct 14
Now Khan Academy can hardly be chastised for giving students rewards like this. The whole letter grading system is "gamification of learning" to some extent. But as some people have found, this sort of reward system on Khan Academy may encourage completion of material for the sake of badges, rather than for the sake of learning itself. At the Los Altos USD, one of the places where Khan Academy is being piloted in the classroom, teachers note, "The problem here is that sometimes people rush through the exercise without learning it just to get a badge. The creators of Khan Academy added badges to make it more interesting and motivating, not to make you ignore everything else and just aim for the badges."