By Daniel de Angulo, Product Manager, Learner Experience at Khan Academy
Khan Academy’s new AI-powered tutor and teaching assistant, Khanmigo, is a groundbreaking platform that provides high-quality, on-demand tutoring to help kids catch up, review, or accelerate ahead. But how do we teach an AI tool to educate like a human? Enter prompt engineering—the art and science of crafting precise inputs to guide AI responses. In this deep dive, we’ll explore our seven-step approach to crafting prompt engineering.
1. Understanding the ideal tutor-student relationship
One-on-one tutoring has always been the gold standard in education. In 1984, Benjamin Bloom found that personal tutoring could significantly boost a student’s performance, but he called it the “2 Sigma Problem” because it has always been too costly to offer this level of attention to everyone. At Khan Academy, we believe that AI can bridge that gap. With tools like Khanmigo, we aim to bring personalized learning to students everywhere. Our approach to prompt engineering begins with really understanding the tutor-to-student relationship and using it to accelerate learning. We envision the perfect tutor-to-student interaction. What would make it…
