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.
This! Don’t blame the tech, blame the grown ups not able to teach the young how to use tech!
The study is still valuable, this is a math class not a technology class, so understanding it’s impact is important.
Yea, did not read that promptengineered chatGPT was better than non chatGPT class 😄 but I guess that proofs my point as well, because if students in group with normal chatGPT were teached how to prompt normal ChatGPT so that it answer in a more teacher style, I bet they would have similar results as students with promtengineered chatGPT