Can you provide some references to the research you're referring to? Sounds interesting but you haven't really provided enough information to find it.
Re:How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
by pasc1878 on Monday August 10, 2026 @03:40AM
(#49240554)
That is the point – you can't just provide the references in a short post here.
You need much more time and guidance.
Ironically, LLMs are pretty good at finding stuff like that from vague descriptions. With that, I think the parent commenter meant Art Graesser's AutoTutor work based on the terminology used (hint/pump).
TLDR: Actual human tutoring sessions were recorded and analyzed and Socratic questioning was barely used at all. Instead the following pattern was observed:
Pump — "Uh huh?" "What else?" Costs nothing, so try it first.
Hint — points at the region of the answer. "What about the pumpkin's motion sideways?"
Prompt — fishes for one specific word, with the sentence frame supplied. "The pumpkin keeps moving forward at the same ___?"
Assertion — just says it. "It keeps the runner's horizontal velocity."
Re:How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
by voidhorse on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @09:02AM
(#49271769)
Yes, you're on the money. And this is a perfect example of how people should use llms. Use them to deepen your own research and understanding rather than use them to glaze and implement the first naive idea that comes into your head (or the first idea they suggest as a response to a vague prompt, which typically is substantially worse than if you get them into the right vector space using jargon)
The body of literature on learning theory, and beyond that on specific types of learning and specific mediums such as learning from text is so rich there are way more useful models to draw from. Believe it or not, prellm, researchers in the textual learning field had already demonstrated you can achieve performance equal or better than novice tutors using pretty basic computer aids that follow specific hint/pump interaction structures. Guiding an LLM to use these findings has evidence backing it and is way better than telling it "i guess be like socrates". The problem is, to realize there might be richer more effective and highly researched ways of tackling the problem beyond the first fart of a thought you had one afternoon requires the deep respect for expertise and specialization that precisely basically everyone in the AI space right now fundamentally lacks.