This study examined implementing the online website Khan Academy as a primary resource for mathematics instruction. Participants were high school students aged 15-18 years enrolled in the traditional mathematics courses of Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. A pre-test/post-test research design was implemented over the course of a six-week period of instruction. I wanted to examine whether Khan Academy was associated with positive learning outcomes over the six-week period as compared to measures of normalized growth.
Additionally, I asked whether a beta program to personalize instruction on Khan Academy was associated with statistically significantly better outcomes compared to the regular Khan Academy course sequences alone. To address my questions, I randomly assigned students into treatment and comparison groups. As a measure of learning growth, I used the Northwest Education Assessment’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) to establish a pre-treatment baseline and again at the end of the program to measure learning growth. I compared before and after means. Overall, I found that students in both groups showed overall positive growth, statistically significantly different from normal expected growth. However, I did not find a statistically significant difference between the two groups.
In terms of practical implementation, the results of this study suggest that use of Khan Academy as a primary instructional resource is associated with positive learning outcomes in this data set. Further study with larger sample sizes to confirm these preliminary results is recommended.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/23919 |
| Date | 31 October 2018 |
| Creators | Barrett, Geoffrey |
| Contributors | Scalise, Kathleen |
| Publisher | University of Oregon |
| Source Sets | University of Oregon |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | All Rights Reserved. |
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