Dive Brief:
- Using a generative artificial intelligence tool during in-person tutoring sessions increased the tutors' capacity to guide students through complex math problems and led to improved student math performance, according to a study released Monday from Stanford University researchers.
- Called Tutor CoPilot, the open-source tool developed at Stanford can be embedded in any tutoring platform and helps live tutors ask guiding questions to students and respond to student needs. However, tutors working with the tool suggested improvements to make the guidance for tutors more grade-appropriate.
- Researchers said this first-ever randomized controlled trial of a human-AI system in live tutoring situations shows promise in increasing the effectiveness of in-person tutors.
Dive Insight:
Students whose tutors used Tutor CoPilot were 4 percentage points more likely to progress through math tutoring session assessments successfully compared to students whose tutors did not have AI assistance, the study found.
The approach particularly benefited lower-rated and less-experienced tutors, researchers said. Students of lower-rated tutors who used the AI assistance increased their math proficiency up to 9 percentage points on average compared to students learning from lower-rated tutors without AI assistance.
The study included 900 tutors and 1,800 elementary and secondary school students from a large school district in the South. Stanford partnered with tutoring company FEV Tutor to pilot the tool's implementation.
Here's how it works: A tutor presents a subtraction problem to a student. If the student answers incorrectly, the tutor can activate Tutor CoPilot, which will recommend that the tutor ask the student to identify the numbers in the problem or suggest the student draw the items that need to be subtracted.
"Novices often struggle to remediate student mistakes in real-time, missing critical learning opportunities," the study said.
For privacy protections, the tool automatically de-identifies student and tutor names and limits the amount of user information sent to external language model services, researchers said. Chat GPT is an example of one such large language model.
A tool like this one provides the potential for school districts to expand tutoring because it can be less expensive than traditional professional development. The study estimates the cost of Tutor CoPilot at $20 per tutor annually, based on the tutors’ usage during the study.
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