Study of 27,000 students finds AI boosts homework but hurts exam scores

[SammyZayn]

A large study tracking about 27,000 Chinese students aged 12 to 18 over 30 months found that after adopting generative AI, homework scores rose by 18 percent while time spent on each assignment fell by roughly 30 percent, from 64 minutes down to 45 minutes on average. But when the same students sat monthly closed book exams without AI assistance, their scores fell by 20 percent within six months, and the effect compounded over time, with high stakes entrance exam scores dropping between 18 and 24 percent after two years

Researchers David Stromberg of Stockholm University, along with Victor Lei and Yanhui Wu of the University of Hong Kong, found the learning losses were concentrated among roughly 80 percent of AI users who specifically used the tools to speed through tasks rather than genuinely engage with the material, while students who kept a similar task completion time to non-users experienced only small learning losses. The researchers wrote that for students, completing tasks efficiently isn't actually the goal, learning from them is, and that the rapid spread of generative AI tools has created a substantial negative impact on genuine student learning

The pattern notably inverted a previously reliable predictor, where strong homework performance used to reliably signal strong exam performance too, but after AI adoption, students with the highest homework grades increasingly performed worse on exams, since AI had effectively started doing the actual thinking for them rather than merely supporting it. An OECD Digital Education Outlook report published in January reached a similar conclusion more broadly. Curious what people think schools should actually do given these findings, restrict AI use during homework entirely, or find ways to redesign assignments so genuine learning stays the actual goal

Faster homework, poor exam results: What AI is doing to students' learningwww.aljazeera.com