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Major players in online education market

Comparing Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, & edX missions, offerings

STAFF REPORTER

September 4, 2012

With most new markets comes competition, as is the case with online education. Today, there are four major platforms that produce content specifically for online instruction: Coursera, Udacity, and edX, which provide university-level content, and Khan Academy, which largely targets K-12 education. While they all offer content designed specifically for web-based instruction, they differ slightly in missions, delivery, and focus.

Khan Academy is an educational nonprofit founded in September 2008 by Salman A. Khan 98. According to its website, its mission is to change education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

Khan conceived the idea after making a website to help tutor his niece in 2004, and two years later he would post the first public video. The website has since grown to contain over 3,300 videos, most of which were made by Khan himself. There are also over 400 million interactive problems, grouped loosely into 47 courses, ranging from addition to linear algebra and macroeconomics. Khan Academy receives over six million unique users each month, has around 380,000 YouTube subscribers, and has had 179 million video views so far. The organization is supported by donors such as Google Inc. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Most of the videos, which tend to be around 1015 minutes long, are on YouTube, with the exception of the Computer Science section, which contains integrated coding.

The instruction is oriented toward the casual learner as a supplement to traditional classroom learning. The videos have practice problems with hints and solutions, and there are no exams like in edX or Udacity. Users can earn badges based on their time spent on the site and how many assignments they have completed. Students have individual profiles, which allows teachers, coaches, and the students themselves to view summarized performance and achievement data. There are also forums that foster collaboration between students.

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Major players in online education market