As an MIT alum, I'm proud that MIT is having a commencement speaker who is working on something fundamentally disruptive to the status quo of education. It's an enlightened point of view - "disrupt yourself before someone else does."
It's nice that his work is getting more and more recognition, especially from an established educational institution, but it really would make more sense to have him speak to the new students, not those who are already graduating.
I, too, would have preferred to have Sal. We had another Fortune 500 CEO -- it wasn't a bad speech, but the speaker was unknown to most of the crowd and is not regarded as an innovator/trailblazer/person who has made as large an impact as Sal has in his field.
Khan academy’s material is mostly useless to me, as someone who has gone through high school and college taking a wide variety of courses, and read up on the basics of many fields; I could probably get something from the finance and organic chemistry sections, if I decided those were important to learn about (though I think I’d start with a book or a set of university lecture videos first).
MIT’s OCW by contrast is a gold mine.
The two are just aimed at entirely different audiences.
Except MIT's OpenCourseWare has a lot harder stuff. I'm not saying Khan Academy isn't doing good things - it is, but it's designed for a fundamentally different audience, even if there is some overlap. Kahn Academy is for kids, or to get a basic handle on things. For that it is superb, better than anything out there. OpenCourseWare is in general high-level, sophisticated, and far more in depth. Just because you watched Kahn Academy's presentation on diffeq, for instance, doesn't mean you'd be able to breeze through OpenCourseWare's diffeq.
Edit: BTW I wholeheartedly think Kahn Academy is awesome.
Khan Academy has expanded quite a bit and is not just for kids. The sections on Finance and Banking are better than any of the college lectures available.
Khan Academy material is generally better than a recorded college lecture because it is designed specifically for web video. Even in the good OpenCourseWare lectures, or similar videos from Stanford, at least half the video is wasted time.
I was pretty excited when videos of real classes from respected universities became available online for free. I have watched quite a few from places like MIT and Stanford. One unexpected result I've had is that I have been mostly unimpressed. The lectures were not better than the lectures I went to at the no-name college I attended. My conclusion is that college lectures really aren't an efficient way to disseminate education, and they are even less so when they are recorded on video. I am now much more excited for Khan Academy's expansion into more advanced topics.
"My conclusion is that college lectures really aren't an efficient way to disseminate education, and they are even less so when they are recorded on video."
I'm curious about how you came to the conclusion that lectures are less efficient when they are recorded on video. It seems to me that (for the student which doesn't speak up and engage the instructor in class -- most students?), that a recorded lecture would provide a near identical experience. I would expect that recorded recorded lectures would also allow students to slow down, decompose, repeat, and revisit portions of the lecture in order to better grasp the information at their own pace.
Is it the issue of not being physically surrounded by students or faced by an instructor that you're not keen on? Perhaps a lack of physical accountability to keep students attentive and on-point?
For me personally, if I have the opportunity to ask questions, I will think of questions to ask and as a byproduct, think about the lecture more critically. If I am unable to ask questions, I am less likely to think critically. Of course, I have just realized this and now that I am aware of this, I can possibly put a stop to this and get more out of video lectures and even real life lectures where questions are discouraged.
The major difference is lectures of Khan Academy, or the new Stanford lectures have a one-to-one lecture format, that probably engages people more.
College lectures, or classroom lectures are non-ideal [1], in an ideal world, each student would have a corresponding teacher. The beauty of technology and Internet is that now we can simulate one-to-one lectures for masses.
[1] There are probably some situations where classroom lectures are better, when the lecture is enhanced by questions via discussion.
Efficient was the wrong word. The reason videotaped lectures are worse than being there in person: I often can't see the board on the video, and I can't ask questions.
I really wasn't impressed by the finance/banking Khan Academy talks. They seem worse (adjusted for grade level; they seem to be designed for "general adult, non-academic or professional interest") than the algebra/geometry classes (assuming those are aimed at grades 6-12.)
What I'd like is something at the MBA curriculum level (e.g. Wharton Finance) or the training programs used to bring physics phds up to speed on finance as quants), and executed well. Unfortunately this is probably considered a proprietary/competitive advantage for these firms, so they won't release it.
