Writing is a vital skill for success in modern society, but many students don't get the kind of feedback they need, says Sal Khan. “Unlike something like math, which is also very important to a person's success in life, (with writing) it's very difficult to get fast-cycle feedback,” he says. “While doing it, you tend to lack support. Then you send it out and you get feedback, often limited feedback, often a week or two later.”
Many of those who manage to write do so thanks to unofficial tutoring at home. “I guess most of the support for writing comes from family,” says Khan, founder of the free online learning platform Khan Academy. But not all students have supportive family environments, which is why writing success varies so much among students.
However, Khan believes that generative ai can now help make writing education accessible to all students. In late November, Khanmigo, Khan Academy's ai tutor powered by GPT-4, improved writing assistance for students with the launch of Khanmigo Academic Essay Tool. You can provide specific feedback on a student's essay as a whole, offering suggestions on structure, organization, tone, introduction and conclusions, and how students construct and support their arguments. Students can also ask clarifying questions to Khanmigo's academic essay tool.
I recently had the opportunity to try out the Khanmigo academic essay tool and speak with Khan about what it can do currently and how it will evolve to better support students in the future.
How Khanmigo Academic Essay Writing Works Now
Khanmigo's academic essay writing tool has an ai chatbot feel that is familiar to many today, but unlike Google's ChatGPT or Bard, etc., Khanmigo's academic essay tool does not write essays for students. students.
While trying it out, I asked for feedback on an early draft of a story I was working on about The impact of ai on assistive technology. Khanmigo praised the professionalism of my writing (thank you very much!), but suggested a stronger thesis statement in my introduction. News and magazine articles don't necessarily have a thesis statement, so while Khanmigo's advice wasn't applicable to my work, the tool correctly noted that a thesis was missing. This could certainly be useful to a young writing student.
I was also impressed with the follow-up questions feature. When I asked him to provide me with details on how to write a thesis statement, he offered some good advice on how I could craft an effective thesis. However, as impressive as it may seem, these features are just the beginning of what Khanmigo's academic essay tool can do.
“Within a year, we will have a teacher who can assign work with ai and build a writing activity that includes a rubric, and assign it through ai,” Khan says. “ai not only provides information, but also helps in the process. 'Here is a thesis, let's make an outline together. Let's find some data to support your points. And then when the ai reports back to the professor, it won't just say, “Here's the graded essay.” He's going to say, 'Here's the rehearsal, it took four hours.' We had some trouble coming up with a thesis statement, but we finally did it.'”
The tool will then suggest a grade based on the rubric that Khanmigo and the teacher create together, but the final grade will depend on the teacher.
Khanmigo will also potentially help identify traps. “If a student went to ChatGPT or asked her sister to write the essay and just copy-pasted it, the ai would tell the teacher, 'I don't know where this came from. It just came up, I didn't work on it with the student, and it certainly doesn't match the writing they did in class.'”
Khan Academy's new approach to writing
Khan believes that generative ai can change the way writing is taught in schools and is working on a new book that addresses this topic. He also anticipates that teaching writing will be a bigger part of Khan Academy in the future.
“Our mission is a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere,” he says. “If you had asked me a year and a half ago, I would have said, 'We're going to be able to apply a lot of those foundational layers of education, Blooms Taxonomy, we're going to handle them like the bottom two-thirds very well.' And then the top third, which I would include writing, would have said, 'We won't be able to do it in our lifetimes.' And that's different now.”
Khan adds: “Many people associate Khan Academy with math and science. I think next year we will be equally or stronger in reading and writing.”
