Journal Paper2026
Journal Paper 50Experimental evidence on the learning impact of generative AI: gains persisted when students used it for explanation rather than automation
Zara Contractor, Germán Reyes
arXiv working paper
A randomized, proctored experiment reported that undergraduate access to off-the-shelf generative AI raised immediate factual and conceptual test performance by 0.27 standard deviations and that the gains persisted one week later. The working paper also finds a consequential usage pattern: students who used AI to explain concepts showed stronger delayed gains than students who used it to automate drafting.
generative AIrandomized experimenthigher education
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