Years ago, when I first started creating and posting review activities to this site, students would frequently print particular problems out and bring them to class, asking me to explain or solve the problems in class. While this worked fairly well for MY students, I realized that it did nothing for other students accessing the activities.
It was apparent to me that while the review activities helped to confirm a student’s knowledge of facts, or their capacity to solve particular problems, they really did nothing to instruct, or assist in learning the content. I long puzzled over ways to redirect students from incorrect answers to content that would help them fill in the gaps, but the logistics were overwhelming. Given the thousands of problems I’ve posted, there appeared to be no way to provide justifications for correct answers, much less detailed solutions to math-based problems.
Now fast forward to 2025, and artificial intelligence provides a better tool than I ever could have imagined. ChatGPT has added a feature called “Study Mode.” Google’s Gemini has added a feature called “Guided Learning”. In both cases, you can paste a question from a review activity into the AI tool of your choice and get an answer, a justification for the answer, a method for solving the problem, the justification for the method, and even more review questions to test your mastery.
Wild times!
