Last week, our efficacy and research team flagged a new NBER working paper to me: “One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment,” by Philip Oreopoulos and Nina Low. Up front: Khan Academy was not involved in designing or running this study. It’s independent research, which is exactly why it’s worth sharing.
I should be clear that a finding the authors put front and center isn’t this one. The title of the study is “One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment.” It was a study that intended to examine the effects of Khanmigo. However, students used Khanmigo infrequently, which matches what we’ve been saying publicly for a while. The paper attributes low Khanmigo use to behavioral barriers around help-seeking, which is compounded by a non-proactive interface, rather than to any limitation in what Khanmigo itself could do.