diff --git a/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/chat_handlers/learn.py b/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/chat_handlers/learn.py
index da6fac670..fd2d6e442 100644
--- a/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/chat_handlers/learn.py
+++ b/packages/jupyter-ai/jupyter_ai/chat_handlers/learn.py
@@ -135,7 +135,7 @@ def _build_list_response(self):
 
     async def learn_dir(self, path: str, chunk_size: int, chunk_overlap: int):
         dask_client = await self.dask_client_future
-        splitter_kwargs = {chunk_size: chunk_size, chunk_overlap: chunk_overlap}
+        splitter_kwargs = {"chunk_size": chunk_size, "chunk_overlap": chunk_overlap}
         splitters = {
             ".py": PythonCodeTextSplitter(**splitter_kwargs),
             ".md": MarkdownTextSplitter(**splitter_kwargs),