Exploring task formulation strategies to evaluate the coherence of classroom discussions with GPT-4o
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Engaging students in a coherent classroom discussion is one aspect of high-quality instruction and is an important skill that requires practice to acquire.With the goal of providing teachers with formative feedback on their classroom discussions, we investigate automated means for evaluating teachers' ability to lead coherent discussions in simulated classrooms.While prior work has shown the effectiveness of large language models (LLMs) in assessing the coherence of relatively short texts, it has also found that LLMs struggle when assessing instructional quality.We evaluate the generalizability of task formulation strategies for assessing the coherence of classroom discussions across different subject domains using GPT-4o and discuss how these formulations address the previously reported challenges-the overestimation of instructional quality and the inability to extract relevant parts of discussions.Finally, we report lack of generalizability across domains and the misalignment with humans in the use of evidence from discussions as remaining challenges.
Authors: Yuya Asano, Beata Beigman Klebanov, Jamie Mikeska
Institutions: University of Pittsburgh, Educational Testing Service
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: National Science Foundation
Awards: Online Practice Suite: Practice Spaces, Simulations and Virtual Reality Environments for Preservice Teachers to Learn to Facilitate Argumentation Discussions in Math and Science, Developing Preservice Elementary Teachers' Ability to Facilitate Goal-Oriented Discussions in Science and Mathematics via the Use of Simulated Classroom Interactions, RAPID: Learning to Teach During COVID-19: Leveraging Simulated Classrooms as Practice-Based Spaces for Preservice Elementary Teachers within Online Teacher Education Courses
OpenAlex ID: W4412889257
