Where can you go online to learn—not just learn to solve an immediate problem, but advance your understanding of a topic or start studying something from scratch? For most academic subjects, the best place is Khan Academy. Khan Academy is a free website with course material covering math, science, art history, and other subjects. The lessons contain videos, readings, and interactive components, which are sequenced so that you can start from square one with any subject and slowly build your knowledge.
In July 2020, the site announced it would concentrate more acutely on kindergarten through early college courses and was thus retiring materials that fall outside that scope. There are some small gaps in the content catalog; Khan doesn’t offer classes in music, music appreciation, or foreign languages, for example. It does, however, offer its courses to speakers of other languages, namely, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. In other words, you can take Algebra I taught in Spanish rather than English. Support for more languages is in the works. Given what it offers and the fact that it’s entirely free to use, Khan Academy is the best learning site for academic subjects and an Editors’ Choice.
For non-academic learning, such as professional development or building creative skills, check out some of the other sites we’ve reviewed. MasterClass, for example, is a source of inspiration and deeper understanding of a few select areas, such as cooking, filmmaking, writing, sports, among others. For professional development, whether soft skills like leadership or hard skills such as Photoshop, a great resource is LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com). For a wide range of creative skills, both professional and for pleasure, Skillshare has a wide selection of instructional videos.
What Is Khan Academy?
Khan Academy started when its founder, Sal Khan, began tutoring his cousin. At the time, Khan was a financial analyst. He recorded videos of a virtual blackboard with voice-over narrations to explain different concepts in mathematics to his cousin. He began posting these lessons on YouTube.
Over some years, the concept grew into Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that cultivates academic courses and makes them freely available online. To this day, Khan Academy has a reputation for being strong in math, as well as economics and finance, and it has partnered with other institutions and educators to expand into other fields.
What Subjects Does Khan Academy Cover?
Khan Academy caters to students in the American education system. Plenty of its courses stick to the formal curriculum for different grade levels.
In addition to math, economics and finance, Khan Academy covers science and engineering; computing; arts and humanities; test prep; college prep; career prep; and English language arts. Most of these topics have specific courses within them. For example, you can enroll in Precalculus, US history, and an LSAT prep course. There’s no limit on the number of courses you can take.
There are materials for young learners ages 2 to 7, too, in a mobile app called Khan Academy Kids. There’s an iPhone app, an iPad app, and an Android app. For students in primary school, there are courses in English language arts and math that align with school years, such as Second Grade Math.
Another example is AP courses. AP, or Advanced Placement, is a program in the US in which students can take courses in high school, if they qualify, that count toward their undergraduate degree. In other words, students can take a university course before paying for university, and if they pass a standardized exam at the end, they get college credit. The AP courses on Khan Academy prepare students in the subject matter, but the students still have to take the formal test wherever it’s given; they cannot take the test or receive the final credit via Khan.
Cost and Availability
As mentioned, Khan Academy and the organization that runs it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Its mission is “to provide a free, world‑class education for anyone, anywhere.” Therefore, Khan Academy is totally free. You don’t even need to make an account and sign in to access the lessons.
If you do make an account and sign in, you can keep track of your progress in various courses and access other features. One of these extra features is to give a teacher, tutor, or parent access to your learning history and let them assign challenges or assignments to you.
How Does Khan Academy Work?
Khan Academy is built around video lectures, short readings, interactive quizzes (usually multiple choice), and comment threads. When you enroll in a course, you get access to all the video lectures and other materials that are in that course, and they’re presented in a sequential order. Typically, a course contains units, which contain lessons, and within the lessons are videos, readings, and quizzes.
In many cases, the sequence of lessons and units matters because you need to acquire foundational skills before you can advance your knowledge. Math courses are a good example. If you already have a particular skill, however, you’re free to skip ahead. In some courses, it might make sense to jump into the material you want to learn or review, rather than plow through each and every lesson in order. For example, if you already have a strong understanding of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, you might skip ahead to the second.
Some educators might dispute whether the term “course” is misleading in Khan Academy. It’s a term used by both accredited institutions and more casual places of learning. The courses in Khan Academy refer to a group of learning materials. Some of the courses may have instructors who reply to comments, but you don’t get an assigned instructor to give you personalized attention when you enroll in a course. Likewise, you don’t have formal classmates or a timeline in which you need to work through the material. Khan is entirely self-paced.
In the case of AP courses or even test prep, Khan acts more like a book on the subject than an individualized class. In the same way that you might use an SAT prep book to learn strategies for passing the exam and see examples of questions, you can use Khan Academy. The big difference is the Khan is free and interactive.
The Learning Experience
The experience of following along with lectures and lessons in Khan Academy varies based on the subject matter and who presents it. Founder Sal Khan hosts some of the videos, because they were the initial inspiration for creating the site. Those videos set the tone and style overall.
A good example of Khan’s style can be found in the lessons on retirement accounts in the personal finance course. The videos here use a virtual blackboard where Khan writes a few notes while he talks. You listen to him explain, for example, the difference between a traditional IRA account and a Roth IRA. When he gets into the particulars and starts to make an example about how much money each account will contain, he writes down the figures: the principal investments, how much interest they earn, how much someone would pay in taxes on those accounts (and when), plus whatever fees they would incur for early withdrawals. It’s very similar to having a teacher and blackboard, only you don’t see the teacher.
The tone is friendly and clear. Khan often repeats what he’s just said as he writes it down. For some learners, this style may come off as tedious. Others may see it as an advantage because the learner gets a moment to pause and synthesize the information.
Other materials in the personal finance course aren’t made by Sal Khan but rather are contributions from other parties. A text and two short videos, for example, are available from Better Money Habits. These videos have a more commercial feel to them, but the content is non-promotional.
Given Sal Khan’s previous background as a financial analyst, he’s a great resource for information on the economy and math. When it comes to subjects in the humanities, however, Khan Academy typically relies on other experts. There’s an art history lesson about Islamic arts made by The British Museum, for example, another by TED Ed, and another by UNESCO. Some videos were produced by Khan Academy with the help of experts in the field who were brought in to develop content.
Gamification and Quizzes
As you work your way through material, the site keeps track. It captures how many minutes you spend watching video lessons, reading texts, as well as your scores on quizzes. You also earn mastery points the more you learn, plus badges for reaching various milestones.
Not every course has quizzes, but those that do contain a wealth of questions. If you take a short quiz with only four questions and then retake it later the same day, you’re almost guaranteed not to see the same questions repeated.
Best for Free Academic Learning
Khan Academy is a reliable and highly useful source of academic learning. While it caters specifically to students in primary school through the college prep phase, anyone with a hunger to learn can benefit from Khan. While it may not cover everything, it does offer well-made lessons for the majority of basic academic subjects US students must learn—apart from foreign languages.
Khan Academy Specs
| User Created Classes | No |
| Some Celebrity Instructors | No |
| Some Courses Free | Yes |
