For two years, students in a randomized study had an artificial intelligence (AI) tutor one click away. Of those students, 96% tried it at least once. However, the median student only ended up using the tutor, called Khanmigo, a third of the days they had access to it.
That is the core finding of “One Click Away,” a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by economists Philip Oreopoulos and Nina Low that followed Khan Academy’s Khanmigo in 18 Tennessee middle schools. Students used Khan Academy during daily math intervention sessions, with Khanmigo set up to coach them rather than hand over answers.
Compared with students in the usual remedial instruction, the students in the intervention sessions made modest math gains, about what you would expect from Khan Academy practice without AI. Most students used the AI tutor infrequently, and their conversations with it were rarely about math. In other words, they made little effort to benefit from it.
In a blog post, Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan walked through the study and noted that low use of Khanmigo matched what his organization had been saying publicly. In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, he said the study showed “how much motivation matters.”
Source: EdSurge — Read the full article on the original site ↗