Giving Compass' Take:

· The Aspen Institute interviews Sal Khan about Khan Academy, an online education platform that allows children to learn at their own pace. Khan explains that this tool benefits both teachers and students by personalizing learning for each individual child.

· Does personalized learning increase student success? How is the education field changing?

· Read about the benefits of personalized learning.

More than 60 million registered users utilize Khan Academy. Who are these people?

Our target users are students, from elementary school-aged kids all the way through college students. Some are visiting the website for help, to understand what’s going on in class or prepare for a test. More and more, we’re seeing students who are coming in, directed by teachers to use Khan Academy to learn at their own pace, or they’re doing their homework on Khan Academy. Right now it’s about two-thirds North America, one-third the rest of the world. And even though our target users are kids, a lot of adults use Khan Academy. They’re parents who are trying to help their children, or teachers. Or it might just be people curious about learning!

Khan Academy is being used in school classrooms. What does that look like?

It’s still early days, but all trends look very exciting. When Khan Academy became a real organization in 2011—when we were able to hire up and get offices—some of the local school districts here in Northern California were interested in using our, at the time, fairly primitive tools. They saw some really powerful gains in terms of allowing their students to learn at their own pace. Ever since then, more and more districts have been using Khan Academy. What’s exciting right now is that we have some very large, diverse school districts doing efficacy studies with Khan Academy that look very promising. In particular, Long Beach, a school district that encompasses a major chunk of Los Angeles, has a number of students recieving free or reduced lunches (National School Lunch Program). In the study with Long Beach, we’re seeing very promising results. We’ve been working with Orange County Public Schools in the greater Orlando, Florida area, as well. And we’ve been working outside the United States. In Brazil, the Lemann Foundation has been doing some really neat things in thousands of local classrooms. As far as I know, nothing else in education has been able to move the dial in a measurable way with districts like the ones we’re working with.

Read the full interview with Sal Khan about personalizing education at The Aspen Institute.