Generative AI in Education: From Foundational Insights to the Socratic Playground for Learning
This work addresses the problem of scalable personalized learning for students by proposing an incremental improvement in AI-driven educational tools.
The paper tackles the challenge of integrating generative AI into education by introducing the Socratic Playground, a next-generation Intelligent Tutoring System that uses transformer-based models to provide personalized, adaptive tutoring, overcoming limitations of earlier systems like AutoTutor.
This paper explores the synergy between human cognition and Large Language Models (LLMs), highlighting how generative AI can drive personalized learning at scale. We discuss parallels between LLMs and human cognition, emphasizing both the promise and new perspectives on integrating AI systems into education. After examining challenges in aligning technology with pedagogy, we review AutoTutor-one of the earliest Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS)-and detail its successes, limitations, and unfulfilled aspirations. We then introduce the Socratic Playground, a next-generation ITS that uses advanced transformer-based models to overcome AutoTutor's constraints and provide personalized, adaptive tutoring. To illustrate its evolving capabilities, we present a JSON-based tutoring prompt that systematically guides learner reflection while tracking misconceptions. Throughout, we underscore the importance of placing pedagogy at the forefront, ensuring that technology's power is harnessed to enhance teaching and learning rather than overshadow it.