[michio]

Here's some thoughts I've had regarding using AI in education.

I've been trying and failing to develop a GPT bot that will guide a student through the learning process in anything. The first step to developing such a thing is to clearly define some nebulous terms and more concretely define the goal. The fundamental question is what do we mean by "learn"? What does it mean to learn and understand something? This is a really deep question, and we can go back through 3000 years of philosophical discussion to answer it. Instead of doing that right now which might take a long time, we can indirectly answer that question by looking at respected educational frameworks in the modern day.

I actually just asked ChatGPT what it means to understand something and had a short discussion with it. I then asked it for some respected, contemporary educational frameworks for learning and it told me to check out Bloom's Taxonomy.

I'm not an educator. I don't know any theory behind educational paradigms, and I'm not well read in epistemology and cognitive psychology. So instead of having me butcher this and pretend I know what I'm talking about, let's have ChatGPT explain it.

Bloom's Taxonomy, a framework developed by Benjamin Bloom in 1956, is a classification system used to define and distinguish different levels of human cognition—thinking, learning, and understanding. It's widely used in education to guide curriculum development, instructional methods, and assessment strategies.

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Revised Taxonomy (2001):

Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory.

Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages.

Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing.

Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose.

Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.

Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure.

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I had a long conversation with ChatGPT beyond this, to quickly recap, it suggested there's something explicitly missing from the original, basic framework of Bloom's taxonomy, which is metacognition.

Metacognitive Knowledge: This is the highest level of knowledge and refers to the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. It involves self-awareness about one's cognitive abilities, understanding of one's own learning style and strategies, and knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or problem-solving.

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Implications for Bloom's Taxonomy:

Complementary Relationship: Metacognition complements Bloom’s Taxonomy by adding a layer of self-awareness and regulation over the cognitive processes outlined in the taxonomy.

Dynamic Learning Process: It emphasizes the dynamic and fluid nature of learning, suggesting that cognitive development is not just about acquiring and applying knowledge but also about understanding and regulating one’s own learning process.

In summary, metacognition is intricately linked with Bloom's Taxonomy, primarily interacting with the higher-order thinking skills but also playing a role across all levels. It extends the taxonomy by introducing elements of self-regulation, planning, monitoring, and reflection, thereby enriching the educational framework and emphasizing the importance of self-awareness in learning.

Cool, so we have a good framework for learning anything here: Bloom's taxonomy + metacognition. Bringing all this back to the original point of the thread, how can AI help us in learning anything?

When you're studying something alone, and you have no access to a tutor or teacher, you're at a disadvantage. The 2-way interaction between the student and the teacher is invaluable. If you have access to AI, your ability to learn suddenly becomes much more engaging and effective, because it can fill in that role.

When I get help from AI in solving any coding problem, and when a solution is finally reached, I always like to finish out the interaction by doing a retrospective where I recap what we just did, anything I learned, why something worked or didn't work, why I didn't understand something and what the key ideas were. When I tell ChatGPT all of this, it will double-check the logical and factual content of what I'm saying, and often clarifies and extends anything I just said. It may correct me, and maybe another "loop" happens where I said something incorrect or illogical, so again we do another recap, maybe I have to go look at something again. ChatGPT can help me identify where I'm failing to grasp a key idea or key connection. ChatGPT can help me make a connection to something else entirely, even in another subject, and I can ask it if I'm really stretching or the connection is actually elucidating and enlightening.

I wanted to provide some prompts, but it's kind of hard and it depends on the subject matter. I would say one prompt pattern you can apply to absolutely everything, is to explain something in your own words, then ask ChatGPT if what you're saying is logical, factual, and makes sense. I often say something like, "I think I'm not understanding this because _____." or "I think I was finally able to understand _____ because I needed to _____." then ChatGPT will help me clarify my own thinking or correct something illogical or incorrect that I'm saying. This prompt is ridiculously powerful because it helps you understand and reflect on the way you think and learn.

This is metacognitive part. When you go back and think about the way you think and have a third party analyze that with you, this is how you really, really learn something at a deep level.

There's some positive socioeconomic implications to all of this. Not everyone can afford good education, not everyone can hire a private tutor for 40+ USD / hour. The cost of universities is fucking outrageous in 2024. A lot more people can afford a cheap computer that can run a web browser and a $20 / month subscription to ChatGPT. Assuming you're using it correctly, I would go so far as to say that ChatGPT is going to be a much better tutor than some people charging by the hour for the privilege.