Maybe a project?
A freshman econ teaching assistant
Imagine that a professor introduces freshman economic concepts in class. The AI teaching assistant (AITA) then makes sure that the students are fluent in using the concepts. The AITA will use “spaced repetition” and “testing in novel situations” as part of its teaching repertoire.
Working with Claude, I created a prototype that gives an exercise for the production possibility frontier. It is at https://arnoldkling.com/apps/ppfdemo.html.
Actually, the prototype does not use any AI. That is, when you give your answers it does not really correct your work on the fly. It has the correct answers stored in code. I imagine that AI will come into play as we get to the more sophisticated process of giving more examples and making sure that the student is becoming fluent.
Excellent example. This could also be a valuable resource for high school economics students. Perhaps it could even be developed into an MRU project?
Since the prototype doesn't depend on AI, could that have been written 30 years ago? any guesses why this style of education isn't already extremely popular, and whether the AI version will change anything about those reasons?