Let’s Talk about Khanmigo
When I received an email invitation to Beta test Khan Academy’s AI tutoring tool, Khanmigo, I was pretty excited. I had already tried Chat GPT and Bard before receiving my invitation, but as a long time user of Khan Academy I really wanted to see how they were going to approach AI.
Why, as a then English teacher, did I even have a Khan Academy account dating back to at least 2013 (and I had been referring students there since at least 2010)? They have Humanities content now, but they definitely started with a Math focus.
Well.
I have a complicated relationship with math that I have tried to write about before (and I will probably try to write about again) but, in short, I “suffered” through AP Calculus enough to place out of math as an undergrad and never took another math class again until I decided to sign up for the recently launched Crash Course “Real World Math”.
It has been 30 years since I’ve taken a math class, and there are some concepts that are just not sticking as I work through the course so I put in my donation to Khan Academy and spent some time with the Khanmigo tutor over the last month swhile wearing many different hats: student, educator, writer, and instructional designer.
One thing that I encountered when trying to “study” prior to Khanmigo with Chat GPT and Bard was that there were several situations when one of those AIs just flat out got a question I was working on wrong. After flashing back to AP Calculus and trying to get help from an instructor who could not find a way to explain concepts to me, I felt somewhat reassured that even a LLM AI could struggle with the way a math problem was written or “explained” which could result in a “wrong” answer.
What I found revolutionary about working with Khanmigo, as a student, was the ability to not just ask for answers, but to actual have it tutor me.
I REALLY struggled with the concept of permutations and computations for some reason. I don’t really recall learning set theory. Maybe I did at some point? I love the idea of Venn Diagrams and have actual used them as a visual in the class room but the actual math behind them? That felt all very new.
I worked through the Aleks learning program and videos provided in the math course but working through this tutoring with Khanmigo was what finally gave me that “lightbulb” moment of understanding. And set theory was what this particular course started with so I felt VERY behind from the very start.
The course finishes up on May 3rd, and I’m not sure I will actually finish. I’ve tried to stay working at my own pace since I don’t NEED to finish. But it has me reflecting on what it would be like to NEED the course. It would be daunting. I can’t help thinking there has to be a better way for us to teach math in general. I would really like to have a better handle on concepts, especially stats, for my current job as an instructional designer, but, even with Khanmigo, not all of the concepts are completely sticking. They are getting closer. I am using what I know about learning theory to TRY and make them stickier.
In addition to the tutoring, I pretty much tried out all the other features, from creative collaboration with story ideas to writing lesson plans.
I saved a lot of images to reflect upon of my research, but the last one I will share was playing with the debate a topic feature because I think it really shows the collaboration, tone, and encouragement for you, the learner, to go forth and use the experience to LEARN more versus just getting answers. That’s what I really loved about my Khanmigo experience.
