Then AI can be most useful, she said. With some prompted chatbot, it can provide immediate writing reviews aimed at the needs of each student. A student may need to practice writing a short sentences. Another can fight the structure of history and outline. I can theoretically meet the needs of a whole classroom faster than a human teacher.
In Mayer’s experiments, she inserted AI only after the first project was made as part of the revision process. In a exploration Posted in 2024, it randomly appointed 200 German high school students to receive AI feedback after writing a draft in English. Their revised essays were stronger than those of 250 students, who were also told to review but did not receive AI help.
In studies, those with AI reviews also said they were more motivated to rewrite those who do not receive feedback. This motivation is critical. Often students are not set up to rewrite and without revisions students cannot become better writers.
Mayer does not consider her experimental proof that AI is a great writing teacher. She did not compare it to how writing students improved after human reviews. Her experiment compares only the feedback of AI without feedback.
The most important thing is that a dose of AI writing reviews was not enough to enhance students’ writing skills. On the second, a new topic for essays, students who previously received AI reviews did not write better than students who were not assisted by AI.
It is not clear how many AI feedback circles will be needed to enhance the skills of writing a student more permanent, and not simply help to review the essay.
And Mayer does not know if a student would want to continue to discuss writing with AI Bot over and over again. Perhaps the students were ready to commit to him in this experiment because it was a novelty, but soon he could get tired of him. This is the next one in the Mayer Research Program.
Viral MIT study
A much less study of MIT, published earlier this year, sounds Mayer’s theory. “Your Chatgpt brain“It became viral as it seemed that using Chatgpt to help writing an essay, made students’ brain more engaged. Researchers find that students who wrote an essay without any online instruments have a stronger brain connection and the activity of the time of the time, and the students who have used AI or consulting with Google for Google the brain like Ai.))
Although these results are made TitlesThere was still in the experiment. Students who initially wrote an essay on their own, later received Chatgpt to help improve their essays. This Chatgpt switch has increased brain activity, as opposed to what neurologists discovered during the initial writing process.
These studies add to the evidence that slowing AI shortly after some initial thinking and preparation can be a sweet place in learning. This is something that researchers need to test more.
However, Mayer remains concerned about giving AI tools to many weak writers and young children who have not developed basic writing skills. “This can be a real problem,” Meyer said. “It may be disastrous to use these instruments too early.”
Cheating on your way to learning?
Mayer does not think it’s always a bad idea for students to ask Chatgpt to write about them.
Just as young artists learn to draw by copying masterpieces in museums, students can learn to write better by copying good writing. (The late Grand Editor of New Yorker John Bennett learned Jill to write this way. He called him “copying work” and he encouraged his journalism students to do it every week, copying the long words of legendary writers, not AI.)
Mayer suggests that students ask Chatgpt to write an essay that meets the criteria for setting and evaluating their teacher. The next step is key. If students pretend to be their own piece and present it, it is a cheating. They also unloaded the cognitive work on technology and have learned nothing.
But AI’s essay can be an effective teaching tool, in theory, if students study the arguments, the organizational structure, the construction of sentences and the dictionary before writing a new project in their own words. Ideally, the next task should be better if the students have learned through this analysis and internalized the style and techniques of the model essay, Meyer said.
“My hypothesis would be as long as there is cognitive effort with her, as long as there is a lot of time for the task and as a critical thinking about production, then it must be good,” Mayer said.
Praise
Everyone likes a compliment. But too much praise can drown in training just as too much water can protect flowers from flowering.
Chatgpt tends to praise on fat and often starts with banal flattery, like “Great job!” Even when writing a student needs a lot of work. In the Mayer test, whether the AI feedback could improve students’ writing, she deliberately told Chatgpt not to start with praise and instead go straight to constructive criticism.
Her Parsemonic approach to praise is inspired by a 2023 Written Survey about what motivates students to review. The study found that when teachers started with a general praise, students were left with the false impression that their work was already good enough, so they did not make any additional efforts to rewrite.
In Mayer’s experiment, the reviews of praise were effective in making students revise and improve their essays. But it did not create direct competition between the two approaches-without praise, so that we do not know for sure what is more effective when students interact with AI.
Being tough with praise rubs real teachers in the wrong way. After Mayer removed the praise from the feedback, the teachers told her that they wanted to restore it. “They wondered why the feedback was so negative,” Meyer said. “They would not do so.”
Mayer and other researchers can one day decide the puzzle on how to turn AI chatbots into great writing coaches. But whether students will have the willpower or the desire to give up the immediately written essay is another question. While Chatgpt continues to allow students to go out the easy path, it is human nature to do it.
Shirley Liu is a graduate student at Northwestern University. Liu reported and wrote this story with Jill Barchay from the Hachinger report.
