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

submitted 2 months ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] xelar@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 months ago

While I get that, AI could be handy for some subjects, where you wont put your future on. However using it extinsively for everything is quite an exaggeration.

[–] glowie@h4x0r.host 0 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Of all the students in the world, they pick ones from a "Turkish high school". Any clear indication why there of all places when conducted by a US university?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm guessing there was a previous connection with some of the study authors.

I skimmed the paper, and I didn't see it mention language. I'd be more interested to know if they were using ChatGPT in English or Turkish, and how that would affect performance, since I assume the model is trained on significantly more English language data than Turkish.

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[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)

If I had access to ChatGPT during my college years and it helped me parse things I didn't fully understand from the texts or provided much-needed context for what I was studying, I would've done much better having integrated my learning. That's one of the areas where ChatGPT shines. I only got there on my way out. But math problems? Ugh.

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