AI for homework: four kinds of tool, and which ones you learn from

AI for homework comes in four kinds: photo solvers that give you the answer to a snapped question, general chatbots, chatbots with a tutoring or study mode, and study tools that work from your own course files. All of them can get your homework done. The difference that matters is whether you can still do the questions on the test, when the AI is gone. A large classroom experiment found students who used a plain chatbot for maths practice did better on the practice and worse on the exam than students with no AI at all. This post compares the four kinds on that question, says where Bord fits, and gives a way to use any of them that keeps the learning yours.

What happens when students use AI for homework

Bastani and colleagues ran a field experiment with close to a thousand students at a high school in Turkey [1]. During maths practice sessions, one group had a standard GPT-4 chat interface, one had a version with tutoring prompts that gave hints instead of answers, and one had no AI. Then everyone sat an exam without AI.

On the practice problems, both AI groups did far better than the no-AI group. On the exam, the students who had the plain chatbot did worse than the students who never had AI. The researchers concluded that many had used it as a crutch, asking for answers instead of working the problems. The students with the hint-giving tutor did about as well on the exam as the no-AI group, so the guardrails removed the harm, though they did not produce a gain on the exam.

That is one study, in one subject, in one school. Its result matches what decades of learning research would predict: you remember what you work out and retrieve, not what you read. Homework exists to make you practise. A tool that removes the practice gets the homework done and skips what it was for.

The four kinds of AI homework tool

Side by side

How to use AI for homework and still learn it

Whatever tool you use, the rule is the same: try first, ask second, and prove it at the end.

1. Attempt every question on your own first. Give it ten minutes. Write down where you got stuck. A wrong attempt followed by feedback teaches more than reading a right answer.
2. Ask for the next step, not the answer. "I got to here and don't know what to do next. Give me a hint, not the solution." If the tool has a study mode, turn it on for homework.
3. Ask why each step works. When you see a step you would not have thought of, ask why it works and when you would use it. That is the part the test will need.
4. Redo it cold. Close the chat and do the same question, or one like it, from a blank page. If you cannot, you have not learned it yet. This is the step the Bastani students who copied never got to.
5. Get tested on it later. A day or two after, do a few similar questions without any help. Spacing the practice out makes it stick far better than doing it all at once.

For essays and written work, the same idea applies: use AI to argue with your outline, find the weak point in your argument or check your reading of a source, and write the thing yourself. Check your school's AI policy first; it varies by course.

Where Bord fits

Bord is a noteboard: an endless page where you write notes and sketch, with an AI that works on the same board. It is not a photo solver, and Ask will write out a full solution if you ask it to. Where it helps with homework is the parts after the answer.

• Understanding the method. Ask lays an explanation out on the board as notes and diagrams side by side, and from your own slides or textbook if you add them, with each claim linked to the page. Tutor teaches it out loud while drawing, and stops at checkpoints to ask you questions before moving on.
• Redoing it cold. Work the question yourself in the notebook, beside the explanation, with the explanation scrolled out of view until you are done.
• Being tested on it. Quizbook writes questions on the topic or from your files, marks your answers, and tells you what to revise. Flashcards brings back the formulas and definitions when they are due.

Ask, Tutor, Quizbook and Flashcards can all be tried as a guest without an account. Adding your own course files needs a free account.

Is using AI for homework cheating?

It depends on your school's rules and on the assignment, and those differ more than students expect. Submitting AI-written work as your own breaks most academic integrity policies. Using AI to explain a concept or check your reasoning is allowed in many courses. When in doubt, ask the teacher and say what you used.

The other question is whether it is cheating yourself. If the homework counts for little and the exam for a lot, as it often does, an AI that does your homework hands you the small grade and takes away the practice for the big one. There is a longer version of this in how to study with AI without cheating yourself.

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