The New ChatGPT Study Buddy

I have written previously about how AI can assist in an educationally beneficial way, such as creating a topic outline for a paper (1), evaluating something I have written (1), arguing with me (1, 2), explaining concepts to me (1, 2), and evaluating my understanding (1, 2). 

The new ChatGPT study tool creates a setting for learning that limits what a learner has to request via a prompt. This is a very interesting development available in even the free version of ChatGPT and definitely a capability educators should take a look at before Fall. This version of ChatGPT might be described as a preprompted (yes, I made that word up) version of ChatGPT that attempts to create a style of interaction similar to that of a human tutor. There now seem to be many tutorials you can review, but this tool is simple enough I think i can get you started with just a couple of images.

There are two ways to access the Study Guide. You can either go directly to the Study Guide or go to ChatGPT and then select the study tools from among other specialized tools. 

Your access page when using the direct approach looks like this:

Your access page when first opening ChatGPT appears below. You select the tools icon to reveal a drop down menu with the tool options. You are looking for Study and learn.

You can use the study tools with or without ChatGPT keeping track of your interactions. The advice I read suggests you should allow your interactions to provide a background. This makes some sense as the system can build a model of your background. I had some issues doing this because I wanted to create a description of what it looks like when you start from scratch and the system would not respond as if I was a complete novice. 

You begin by interacting to describe your situation. In your evaluation of this tool for your students I would suggest you pick and topic and situation and create a situation as if you were a student in a class you teach. See how the study help would fit the of students you know. 

I told ChatGPT I was taking a course in Cognitive Psychology. I wanted some help with XXX in preparation for an upcoming text. I asked about Information Processing Theory and then Metacognition so I could see how the system would treat topics very familiar to me. Those familiar with AI chatting understand that there is always an element of unpredictability such that the same prompt can be submitted and a different response generated. The following two images show the response the prompt I described asking about Metacognition. The first part of this response provided an overview and then ended with multiple suggestions as to what I might try next. Do I want to be asked questions? Do I want to learn about a specific theory? 

One of the ideas even proposes a way to conduct a simple experiment related to the research I used to do. This research focused on using the accuracy of learner predictions about how they would perform on an upcoming assessment. I used to describe this aspect of my research in the following way. You are studying for tomorrow’s exam. How do you decide when you are prepared as you want to be? The difference between anticipated and actual performance varies between more and less successful learners. I even created an online study tool that presented multiple choice questions and allowed learners to wager on the accuracy of each response. The goal was to achieve a set point total to meet the study goal. For each question, you could wager .1, .5 or 1 point and this wager was subtracted if your response was wrong and added if you were correct. The idea was to adjust the length of the study system depending on how well a student knew the material. The task that AI proposes in the response is based on this same idea.

Again, my advice is to explore this environment. Ask the system to try something and see what happens. When you disagree with a response, offer a specific challenge and see how the AI tool responds. May the AI system was wrong and maybe it will offer a response that clears up your disagreement.