> we have people who create studies to test our efficacy and help inform future course development. We care about proving the efficacy of our approaches and constantly improving."
I'm curious how that works, what the results are. For instance, is the endpoint metric how many more students pass standardized testing? If so, how does that leak into the definition of 'mastery'?
Standardized testing is indeed one way that we can demonstrate efficacy:
https://www.khanacademy.org/about/impact
That page also includes studies that talk about course pass rates.
I don't know if our efficacy work necessarily changes "mastery" definitions, but I can imagine (but have no direct involvement with) these studies and smaller-scale studies are used by our pedagogy and course creators to improve how we approach the material.
Again, though, not my area of expertise :)