Originally published at: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/concept‑driven-ai-teaching-assistant-guides-students-to-deeper-insights/
In today’s educational landscape, generative AI tools have become both a blessing and a challenge. While these tools offer unprecedented access to information, they’ve also created new concerns about academic integrity. Increasingly, students rely on AI to generate direct answers to homework questions, often at the expense of developing critical thinking skills and mastering core…
Complexities in literature that can often cause struggle, are not indicators of low intelligence. In fact, dense or intricate material that can seem overwhelming should not be avoided, but embraced. The hard work and effort to decode such text often leads to improved comprehension and enhancements in other cognitive domains – Engaging with such difficult texts typically provides the brain with a rigorous cognitive workout. And many areas of cognition can benefit.
Why is it that sometimes when we read, the material is deeply understood at an advanced level and no nuance is missed. While other texts prove to be practically impenetrable and impossible to understand?
Well this is likely due to how “foreign” a text is, outside of our area of expertise. Elusive vocabulary and particularly hard to understand context or sentence constructions can make material daunting. Our poorly executed attempts at constructing meaning can become discouraging when the text simply does not align with our understanding.
Sometimes a text is interlaced with ideas and concepts that are novel and unique and at the same time original, yet the texts can be particularly dense with intricacies that make the narrative or argument difficult to follow.
To eliminate this poor comprehension, it’s important to take time with a text, re reading sentences and segments of the material often. Revisiting difficult parts of the text and approaching it from different angles or under a different lens helps to view the concepts under a different light. Acknowledge how the ideas within the reading reflect and relate to your existing knowledge.
Summarize or reflect on the material each time you complete a paragraph. This ensures you grasp the ideas and concepts fully before moving on to the next segment. It’s important to be patient, intelligent readers are not defined by their ability to understand complex topics with relative ease, instead they are often defined by their ability to embrace complexity and excel when things get difficult.
The determination to understand is what sets good readers apart from ordinary readers. They are more likely to persist when challenges arise. Their dedication and effort to understand is what propels them on a trajectory to advanced comprehension and reading competencies.
Banger