How Khan Academy’s LearnStorm is engaging students in fun learning at home

Earlier this month, Khan Academy, a not-for-profit learning platform, launched its third edition of LearnStorm — a global learning programme to rekindle the joy of learning among kids.

“LearnStorm will be seeing the third edition in India this year. The idea behind this initiative is to get students and teachers excited about learning, more importantly now, with the lockdown,” says Sandeep Bapna, Managing Director of Khan Academy India.

Launched in 2010 in the US by Sal Khan as a not-for-profit learning platform, Khan Academy began its operations in India in 2017 with the help of Tata Trusts. The edtech platform offers free courses in mathematics and science, aligned to the Indian standards, to students between the ages of two and 18 years old.

In a bid to reach a wider student population, Khan Academy’s online study materials are available in languages, including English, Hinglish (Hindi + English), Hindi, Kannada, and Gujarati.

Fun learning with LearnStorm

Khan Academy’s global learning programme LearnStorm is an initiative that enables teachers to help students gain skills, foster growth mindsets, and build teamwork in a fun way. This year, the programme started on October 1 and will continue till December 24. Moreover, this edition will see classes getting conducted in the Hindi and Gujarati languages for the first time.

“With LearnStorm, different classes benchmark their progress against other classes and schools and eliminates individual competition. Moreover, these activities involve badges, certificates, and awards at the group-level, seeking a healthy competition,” says Veenus Katyal, Senior Manager - Schools and Programme in-charge, LearnStorm.

Since its launch, the initiative has had a huge impact on the participating students, as well as teachers. In 2019, LearnStorm saw participation from over one lakh students and more than 3,000 teachers from across 120+ schools in India. The programme enables teachers to assign a set of activities — according to their subject — to engage with the students.

Kiran Gupta — an Academic Lead and TGT in Mathematics for Classes 6-8 from R.N. Poddar School, Mumbai — has been involved with LearnStorm and Khan Academy for over two years now.

“The students have been very enthusiastic about Khan Academy. Over the last two years, I have been planning strategies to combine my classes with the basic concepts that need to be learned before the actual lesson.

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“The students were also very involved and excited, especially when it came to LearnStorm. As soon as I would enter the classroom, the students would stop me from taking my regular pen and paper class, and urge me to assign activities,” Kiran tells SocialStory, describing the impact of LearnStorm programme on her classes.

While in the past editions LearnStorm focussed on scientific learning, coupled with fun times, this year, however, the initiative will be introducing mind-growth concepts to the students.

“This is to ensure that the students will be more self-aware and confident with the idea of ‘I can learn anything.’ So, we inculcated some really fun activities and questions with the curriculum to involve them in mind-growth,” Veenus says.

Amidst all the fun and learning, Khan Academy also ensures giving out rewards to students for their work. This year, at the end of the programme in December, the learning platform will reward one school with a grand prize of 30 tablets.

In fact, it will also reward the Top 10 performing schools with the “Keep Going, Keep Growing” award, where it will give out one tablet to the winning teacher, 30 headsets for students, a trophy, medals, and digital certificates.

The COVID-19 response

Just before the nationwide lockdown in March — which also coincided with the end of the last academic year — Khan Academy India was working on a few foundation courses for specific classes. These courses are content packages that cover the prerequisites (such as concepts) needed for the current academic year.

“We had laid the foundation to these plans in hopes that schools would open at least by July or August. But, in the meantime, a lot of schools began using these foundation classes to prep for the year,” says Sandeep.

The platform introduced bite-sized class lessons, which were sent across platforms like WhatsApp and used by most schools that had partnered with Khan Academy.

This helped teachers to reach out to students easily, especially with the limitations of the online classrooms, covering the content they need for the year.

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“We were able to test the delivery model in March and April with the Delhi and UP governments, and now, we’re able to roll it out for our other school partners,” Sandeep claims.

Through Khan Academy, the Delhi government ensured that the micro-lessons were sent to specific students by SMS that could be finished within a week. Every week, a new batch of lessons would reach the parents for about 10 weeks, to aid the loss of learning caused due to the school closures. Through this, Khan Academy reached out to about five lakh students.

Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh, it was able to reach 1.6 crore learners in Classes 6-8 for about 10 weeks through WhatsApp, with the help of the school teachers.

This year, LearnStorm is expecting a wider adoption, even more than the last year. Moreover, the entire programme has been extended for a longer duration, owing to the pandemic.

According to Sandeep, LearnStorm plays an entirely different yet, crucial role this year. Since there has been lesser physical interaction, the grouped competition and the active participation of students helps them feel more enthusiastic about learning, while also bridging a social gap that is being created, he explains.

“The platform provides a dashboard for teachers to track the progress of the students when it comes to these activities with regular updates. I am hoping that as students and teachers become more comfortable with this platform, they can practice more asynchronous learning,” he adds.