Khan Academy Tutoring

Project Overview

Khanacademy.org has a large database of educational videos for anyone to view for free. After examining the lack of resources in public schools, I designed a product called Khan Academy tutoring. It would act as an extension of Khan Academy that would offer live one on one tutoring sessions 24/7 for free.

Research Insights

There are 1,126,501 students in the NYC School System. Of those students,

72.8 % are economically disadvantaged
20.2 % are students with disabilities
13.2 % of students are English Language Learners

Problem

Many high-need public schools are significantly underfunded and lack resources to hire experienced teachers, offer advanced courses, and buy instructional materials. All of this shows that students in high-poverty schools — many of whom have fewer resources and support outside of the school building — are also getting less in the classroom. With additional research, I found that as income increases, test scores increase. Here, I analyzed NYC public school test data and we see that the majority of economically disadvantaged students scored in the 1 to 2 range while the non-economically disadvantaged students scored in the 3 to 4 range. Thus, giving students access to more resources will allow them to succeed in school and my solution is free online tutoring.

User Persona

One of these nyc public school students is Luis Dominguez. He is a high school student and wants to attend Columbia University to study Biology with the dream of becoming a doctor. He is preparing to take the SAT test next year but his school does not offer tutoring or other resources. He feels lost about how to prepare and starts searching online for SAT tutors, but he realizes they are out of his budget and the library doesn’t have any practice books for the new SAT test.

Planning & Analysis