Tutoring

Sponsored by the University of California, Irvine, and the Spencer Foundation

Resources on Generative AI in Education: Tutoring

Interested in learning more about how to use generative AI for tutoring? See the resources below.

Disclaimer: We do not necessarily advocate for the use of generative AI for tutoring. There are many limitations associated with using such tools for tutoring and it may work better in some contexts than others. That is why the collection of resources below includes both resources that support the use of generative AI for tutoring (including two AI tutors) and resources that focus on the limitations of this approach. By going through this collection of resources, teachers, students, and parents should have a better sense of both the pros and cons of this approach.

Khanmigo - Khan Academy’s tutor enables students to engage in Socratic dialogues to solve problems in various domains. It also has various other modes, for example, allowing students to engage in debates around contemporary issues or talk with historical figures.
Sal Khan’s TED Talk: The amazing AI super tutor for students and teachers - In this TED Talk, Sal Khan talks about the vision behind Khanmigo and using AI to tutor students.
Q-Chat - Quizlet’s Q-Chat is a chatbot with various modes including quizzing students on topics of their choosing, deepening their knowledge in specific subjects, or acting as a personal study coach.
Three Tests AI Needs to Pass Before It Can Start to Transform Teaching - This short blog post by Dan Meyer presents three tests that generative AI must pass for it to be considered as a suitable tutor. It shows some of the limitations of ChatGPT (as of February 2023).

Source: This image was generated using DALL·E 2

Deeper Dive

Do you want to learn more? Following are more in-depth resources on the topic of generative AI for tutoring.

The Relative Effectiveness of Human Tutoring, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, and Other Tutoring Systems - AI-based tutoring is not a new concept. It’s actually decades old. Generative AI just brings new possibilities and challenges in how we approach computer tutoring. This paper from 2011 provides a good overview and empirical comparison of intelligent tutoring systems, other computer-based tutors, and human tutors. It seeks to ask what makes human tutors particularly effective and concludes (perhaps controversially) that good intelligent tutoring systems (before generative AI!) were on par with human tutors.
The AI Teacher Test: Measuring the Pedagogical Ability of Blender and GPT-3 in Educational Dialogues - This paper proposes a test to see how effective AI can be as a tutor. They find that two language models, including GPT-3, are limited in their pedagogical ability compared to human tutors.
GPTeach: Interactive TA Training with GPT Based Students - Shows how ChatGPT might be used to help train TAs by simulating students in office hours.