As a daily user of Anki and Math Academy, I'm very excited about how software can help us learn. Now, with AI, we can really build tools that were not possible before. I built for myself AlgoTutor[1], a CLI tool that teaches Go developers algorithmic skills and concurrency. The recent Understanding floating point[2] from Oz Nova is also a type of tutorial I want to see more often. [1] https://github.com/zuzuleinen/al…
Math Academy is doing it right. Their neat synthesis of spaced repetition and the knowledge DAG is slick, but honestly the extremely fine-grained skill decomposition is what’s missing in virtually all of higher education. I’m trying to follow MA’s example as I put together curricula for my undergraduate CS courses.
> 01 Plans a path with you > 02 Adapts to how you learn > 03 Patiently stays with you until you've mastered new skills 1 and 2 any of the big AI companies will do that for you. I have Claude doing this for me for a few learning areas. 3 to me feels like the Duolingo bird. IMHO, they are trying to solve the wrong thing. People who want to learn will gravitate to learning systems. If you can find a way to pull in peopl…
This is exactly right. I started teaching undergrad CS about 18 months ago after 20 years wandering through other careers, and I quickly realized that students do not need better teaching. They need frequent, direct feedback and an environment that more or less requires them to commit to studying until mastery or to quit early and do something else. Effective learning techniques have been known for decades, but unive…
I believe a huge part of the failure is the lack of teaching anywhere, the general idea of how to manage discussions of disagreement. Because that is not discussed or taught, any topic with disagreements triggers emotional reactions in just enough people that no discussions of any progress can be made in such areas.
When the "middle 50%", as you call them, find they need help or really anything beyond what is immediately available they find they cannot articulate their need, nor can anyone around them understand them in their requests. They are propped up with an incomplete script and just left to flounder around, and because they cannot articulate their situation larger society is allowed to ignore them. Which is a completely manufactured situation.
Somebody here posted about a Socratic method skill for Claude (or whatever your LLM of choice is). I’ve found this to be fantastic. Dropped in a dense PDF about Linear Algebra, Postgres (those are the two I’ve gotten into so far). It’s basically just a skill.md that reads, “Here’s a document, give me an opening statement about the material and ask me a question. As I provide answers, guide me to simpler or more compl…
I've never found this to work properly, because AI doesn't have the empathy to understand where you really struggling.
I'm not super familiar with this approach, but couldn't you just respond with an elaboration on how you don't understand a concept when you encounter it and guide the model in the correct direction?
> 01 Plans a path with you > 02 Adapts to how you learn > 03 Patiently stays with you until you've mastered new skills 1 and 2 any of the big AI companies will do that for you. I have Claude doing this for me for a few learning areas. 3 to me feels like the Duolingo bird. IMHO, they are trying to solve the wrong thing. People who want to learn will gravitate to learning systems. If you can find a way to pull in peopl…
Haven’t found a model yet that really orchestrates in a way that reflects how learning works. Or at least, how I learn.
I can get them into different teaching/learning “modes” and configure those modes appropriately, but they don’t know how to switch between them in context and automatically, and they ALWAYS go tangential and ADHD mode after depressingly few exchanges before they need to reset. I’m talking like, 5? Just not good enough to really satisfy.
Huge improvements over time of course, but they seem to have plateaud for this particular issue.
Wait, when you say one-to-one you mean AI to Human? That’s not the same, I’m sorry.
May I ask why? If by "not the same" you meant: AI is not at the level of a good human educator, it is a fair argument - but not many humans can afford to have a one-to-one human educator either. Perhaps I am a bit more optimistic, but if AI could give me, let's say, 90% of an average lecturer's capability, at 10% of the price or even less, that is probably extremely valuable. (For one, I would certainly be interested…
I just fundamentally believe that AI cannot replace the human aspect of connection. A teacher does more than just teach, they also connect with the students and form relationships. You could argue we may end up with some form of “AI” connection though if that’s a good thing and what is its long term effects on us as a society we are yet to see. Regardless, what I mean to say is I don’t think AI to Human can replace Human to Human as a whole, that’s my point. The marketing copy feels deceptive and not something that speaks to me, I wouldn’t consider that to be same. This feels like it’s marketed towards MOOCs but I am not a fan of education as a product like that either, I come from a place where education is free and this idea of gatekeeping knowledge and forming products around it just doesn’t sit well with me. This just feels like a way to make more money and marketed towards that narrative. You’re right it lowers the cost, but at what cost? MOOCs already didn’t accomplish much the way I see it, I saw much better results from self made paths with things like YouTube or free lectures and/or self made teachers who go above and beyond. That said, I think there is a role for AI in education and I do think it belongs in there, alongside a human educator, in some form.
I started learn linear algebra and some mid-level math stuff couple of years back. While I really wanted to learn I still struggled to find a good learning path and use a product similar to Duolingo for math. Eventually I learned some, then stopped using it and then forgotten all of it. But my point is despite if me really want to learn I found it quite challenging to find learning path that I trusted to be good star…
> While I really wanted to learn I still struggled to find a good learning path For that 3Blue1Brown is very good for this. https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown Better Explained as well, but focuses more on how to understand the concept so you can start to learn. https://betterexplained.com/articles/linear-algebra-guide/
The issue with sources like these is that they are inherently passive. They don't include exercise sets. While they can be good supplementary material, learning happens by doing, not by passively watching.