As one who has gone through about 100+ Khan videos, I appreciate them for what they are - which is usually helping someone over a conceptual hurdle. I would love it if someone were to take the next step, and create a more sophisticated question bank than Khan has, which stresses your learning experience. The one key issue with Khan is that it typically doesn't stress you, and as such, the knowledge retained is usually fairly shallow.

This was how one of my favorite professors would teach, only instead of videos, you just had to read the books and readings he assigned.

The majority of class was spent with him in the front of the room responding to questions or comments about the assignment. He was really gracious and took the time to respond to what might have seemed like bad questions and somehow use them as a springboard to further the discussion.

He would also usually throw out book, movie, or music recommendations that popped into his mind during the course of the class that was related to the topic.

His passion for history and ability to engage the students was what made him an excellent professor.

I agree. It would be weird if we only listened to songs rendered by mediocre live cover bands years after the record, cassette, CD had come and gone.

On another note, one of the biggest, and most baffling, complaints I heard from friends who went to a large local state university was foreign lecturers whose English was so poor they couldn't understand what was being said.

That's the "flipped" classroom model, but these days, we talk more about "self-paced mastery" learning or "personalized" learning, which is different. Basically, students should be able to go at their own pace, so they can dive into whichever topics they don't grasp as easily or find particularly interesting, and not worry about having to keep exactly in step with their classmates. That may mean doing more problems, re-watching videos, etc. These style classrooms don't involve students necessarily doing anything at home, they just give students the equipment to learn at their own pace.

There are some schools trying it out, using Khan Academy and other resources. I've visited a few and it's neat to see. I've also been doing that model in the weekend workshops I teach, and see definite benefits. No more having to rush the students that need more time or bore the students that got it quickly.

Agreed. But the video has to be quality. We have several flipped classrooms at my school, where you watch a video before lecture and then have an interactive session. The videos are mostly a professor talking over a PowerPoint deck, which is worse than a lecture.