I like it! But I probably wouldn’t use it right now because I’m studying other things.

I did test it briefly.

My experience was that for subjects I understood already, I could do the tests and follow along easily.

Then I tried Electrochemistry & Batteries.

So a few things. First of all, I can’t easily go back and see the work I previously did, so I am doing this from memory. I could go back with a reset. I’m not sure if that’s a good user experience that I can’t go back to review previous ideas and concepts.

Oh wait, now I am looking at the course and it started over. I didn’t ask it to reset my progress. Hmm. That may be a bug?

One thing I didn’t like is that if I didn’t understand a concept, I couldn’t easily get more information on it or additional help.

For example, in this prelude to a question:

Oxidation numbers

For molecules, chemists track electrons with oxidation numbers: pretend every bond is ionic, giving the shared electrons to the more electronegative atom. Rules of thumb:

free elements: 0; simple ions: their charge, oxygen is usually −2, hydrogen +1 (with non-metals), the numbers add up to the overall charge.

An increase in oxidation number is oxidation; a decrease is reduction.

I was confused by this. I haven’t studied chemical bonds in a long time. I don’t know why I would pretend the bonds are ionic, and I don’t really have memorized which atoms are more electronegative. So I read this and sort of get it, but I’ve also studied this a long time ago…

Now for the question:

Manganese in permanganate What is the oxidation number of manganese in the permanganate ion, MnO4−MnO4−​?

Okay… so we just went over oxidation numbers. I have to pretend there are ionic bonds (I don’t know what that is exactly from memory, I know it’s a type of chemical bonding). And electrons move to the more electronegative atom. Electronegative atoms wasn’t exactly explained clearly here. I don’t really know how to determine if Mn is electronegative. I see O4 has a negative next to it. Is this negatively charged Oxygen? Does that imply negative electrochemical properties?

I didn’t know, guessed, got it wrong, and then saw the answer:

Explanation

x+4(−2)=−1x+4(−2)=−1, so x=+7x=+7, manganese’s highest oxidation state. That’s why permanganate is such a powerful oxidising agent: manganese is hungry for electrons.

This doesn’t make sense to me. I know the previous screen said -2 was often a number associated metal (“oxygen is usually −2”; it also didn’t clearly define what that is. Is that the charge? Is that the oxidation number?)

After that, the next thing is:

Step 5 of 6 Try it Balance a half-equation In acid, purple permanganate is reduced to colourless Mn2+Mn2+. Balance the half-equation: oxygen first (with water), then hydrogen (with H+H+), then charge (with electrons).

I was able to figure out the right answer by trial and error, but I don’t actually conceptually understand this.

So my main feedback is that this may help people who have studied things before or want to look up things on their own, but for people who don’t understand terms or need remedial help on a concept, there’s not really a way to reinforce lessons or clarify topics.

I don’t know if every lesson is like this, but the one thing that could probably help this the most would be something like a button for “I still don’t understand” that has longer explanations, more examples, and more similar problems. I’m somewhat flexible when learning and don’t need to understand everything right away… but I need to be able to get conceptual clarification on something before trying to build on weak conceptual understandings when I’m studying a topic.

I am sure I could step out of the ecosystem and just ask an LLM why I am not understanding certain parts, but that definitely takes me out of the flow.

I am also not trying to re-learn chemistry or batteries right now. (But I’m pretty sure I never learned how lithium ion batteries worked and so if I could have followed this lesson and then learned more about new battery technology, I would have found that interesting. But I had to stop because of conceptual confusion, and I don’t want to take the time to have an LLM fill in the gaps. But for me to use this, I would probably need to be able to log in, have my progress saved, and harder modules might need more links to various terms. I did skip ahead and I know that I could have covered chemical reactions first. I did try part of that module and it felt too easy.

For me, if I wanted to re-learn chemistry right now so I could learn more about science and improve my science abilities, I would likely just have an LLM teach me directly because I think it could just be faster.

For people who might be interested in using this, for example, a teenager who wants to take some community college courses in lab work because they want to become a genetics researcher and they want to pre-learn some of the material so the course will be easier later, I just don’t know if the explanations are long enough or clarify things enough. Those explanations felt really sparse. I like the structure, I like the diagrams and pictures and those are nice. But just for anything slightly harder, there’s no real clarification when there are conceptual misunderstandings.

You could probably create links for terms (like ionic) that help people review what those things are or their definitions. And you could probably create longer deep-dives for people who get a problem wrong or don’t feel comfortable moving on and then it would work better.

Best of luck with this project!