Education
1 item across 1 edition. First seen Sun 13 Sep, last seen Sun 13 Sep.
- The Decoder, publishing on 13 September, reports a randomised controlled trial by Thibault Schrepel of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam comparing three groups — no ChatGPT access, unguided AI suggestions, and structured prompt-engineering training — with 66 students in 2024 and 164 in 2025.
- The group without AI scored lowest on both the in-class assignment and the take-home exam in both years. Schrepel, who had expected unguided use to hurt performance, is quoted saying: "I was wrong."
- The trained group scored well above the other two in 2024, but by 2025 that advantage had almost closed and all three groups performed at roughly the same level. The Decoder reports Schrepel attributes this to growing familiarity with chatbots.
- Limitations stated in the article: a small sample, students already enrolled in an AI course and so likely more tech-savvy than average, and no way to verify how much AI students actually used during take-home exams. The underlying paper is on SSRN and was not accessible for this edition, so these figures come from The Decoder's report.