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Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests (hechingerreport.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Does AI actually help students learn? A recent experiment in a high school provides a cautionary tale.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students who had access to ChatGPT while doing practice math problems did worse on a math test compared with students who didn’t have access to ChatGPT. Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning.

A third group of students had access to a revised version of ChatGPT that functioned more like a tutor. This chatbot was programmed to provide hints without directly divulging the answer. The students who used it did spectacularly better on the practice problems, solving 127 percent more of them correctly compared with students who did their practice work without any high-tech aids. But on a test afterwards, these AI-tutored students did no better. Students who just did their practice problems the old fashioned way — on their own — matched their test scores.

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[+] [email protected] -7 points 2 months ago (6 children)

The title is pretty misleading. Kids who used ChatGPT to get hints/explanations rather than outright getting the answers did as well as those who had no access to ChatGPT. They probably had a much easier time studying/understanding with it so it's a win for LLMs as a teaching tool imo.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Is it really a win for LLMs if the study found no significant difference between those using it as a tutor and those not?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago

Not everyone can afford a tutor or knows where to find an expert that can answer questions in any given domain. I think such a tool would have made understanding a lot of my college courses a lot easier.

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