Gerd Kortemeyer

Last Name

Kortemeyer

First Name

Gerd

ORCID

0000-0001-6643-9428

Organisational unit

02263 - AI for Education / AI for Education

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Publications1 - 10 of 23

Have to Shake It Up: STEM Education Feeling the Heat from Artificial Intelligence
Kortemeyer, Gerd (2025)
Chimia
General-purpose AI already correctly solves most traditional assessment problems in first-year STEM education, and it continues to become more proficient with every release. This quiet superheating of familiar practices by increasing AI capabilities will yield a messy eruption unless instructors introduce deliberate 'nucleation sites' and shake up the curriculum. We argue that results of science education research are now more relevant than ever since they provide insights and strategies on how to optimize human learning. Finally, we emphasize the importance of community and wellbeing - through peer instruction, studios, and brief, structured oral checks with whiteboarding - to counter loneliness and fatalism. As most of these instructional methods involve open-ended tasks, which tend to be more resource-intensive in grading and feedback than traditional, solution-oriented closed-form answer practices, AI can play an important role in assisting and supporting human educators. Thus, we illustrate how ETH Zurich's Ethel system operationalizes these approaches through a course-grounded chatbot, formative feedback on handwritten work, on-demand practice, and grading assistance, while keeping learning human.
AIt: Intention-preserving Automatic Alt-text Generation for Educational Content
Chatain, Julia; Kortemeyer, Gerd; Fender, Andreas (2024)
EARLI SIG 6 & SIG 7 Book of Abstracts. Instructional Design and Technology Enhanced Learning: Current States and Future Perspectives
Virtual-Reality graph visualization based on Fruchterman-Reingold using Unity and SteamVR
Kortemeyer, Gerd (2022)
Information Visualization
The paper describes a method for the immersive, dynamic visualization of undirected, weighted graphs. Using the Fruchterman-Reingold method, force-directed graphs are drawn in a Virtual-Reality system. The user can walk through the data, as well as move vertices using controllers, while the network display rearranges in realtime according to Newtonian physics. In addition to the physics behind the employed method, the paper explains the most pertinent computational mechanisms for its implementation, using Unity, SteamVR, and a Virtual-Reality system such as HTC Vive (the source package is made available for download). It was found that the method allows for intuitive exploration of graphs with on the order of 10² vertices, and that dynamic extrusion of vertices and realtime readjustment of the network structure allows for developing an intuitive understanding of the relationship of a vertex to the remainder of the network. Based on this observation, possible future developments are suggested.
Cheat sites and artificial intelligence usage in online introductory physics courses: What is the extent and what effect does it have on assessments?
Kortemeyer, Gerd; Bauer, Wolfgang (2024)
Physical Review Physics Education Research
As a result of the pandemic, many physics courses moved online. Alongside, the popularity of Internet-based problem-solving sites and forums rose. With the emergence of large language models, another shift occurred. One year into the public availability of these models, how has online help-seeking behavior among introductory physics students changed, and what is the effect of different patterns of online resource usage In a mixed-method approach, we investigate student choices and their impact on assessment components of an online introductory physics course for scientists and engineers. We find that students still mostly rely on traditional Internet resources and that their usage strongly influences the outcome of low-stake unsupervised quizzes. We empirically found distinct clusters of help-seeking and resource-usage patterns among the students; the impact of students' cluster membership on the supervised assessment components of the course, however, is nonsignificant.
Ethel: A virtual teaching assistant
Kortemeyer, Gerd (2024)
The Physics Teacher
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has shown potential in solving physics problems and providing feedback on assessments. However, results sometimes still are inaccurate or at the wrong level, or use notations and definitions not appropriate for a particular course. A possible solution is augmenting the prompts with course-specific reference materials. Also, for feedback on homework solutions and grading exams, the problem text and the sample solution or grading rubric can be injected into the prompts. Project Ethel at ETH Zurich aims to construct a virtual teaching assistant using these practices.
Attending lectures in person, hybrid or online—how do students choose, and what about the outcome?
Kortemeyer, Gerd; Dittmann-Domenichini, Nora; Schlienger, Claudia; et al. (2023)
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, most courses at a large technical university were adapted so that students had a free choice of whether to attend lectures on-site or online; in addition, in many courses, lecture recordings were available. At the subsequent exam session, over 17,000 student-survey responses were collected regarding attendance choices, learning behavior, interest in the course, perception of the exam, and recommendations to future students. A total of 27 learner attributes and their relationships were investigated. In addition, conditional attributes and free-response statements were analyzed, and the students’ exam grades were retrieved to gauge their performance. We found only minute differences with respect to exam performance, but the analysis indicates distinctly different preferences and constraints in taking advantage of learning opportunities. We also found some indications that performance differences might be larger for interactive-engagement courses. The results of the analysis may be key to answering why at many universities, faculty report that live-lecture attendance has decreased more strongly than expected with the availability of new, virtual attendance modes.
Hybrid teaching: A tale of two populations
Kortemeyer, Gerd; Bauer, Wolfgang; Fisher, Wade (2022)
Physical Review Physics Education Research
In a partially flipped, hybrid introductory physics course where students had a free choice between attending any lecture session in person or via video conferencing, and where recordings of the lecture sessions were made available for asynchronous viewing, a total of 16 learner attributes and their relationships were investigated. Five of these attributes reflect participation choices, while eleven attributes reflect assessment outcomes on different course components. In line with the "no significant difference phenomenon," correlations between exam scores and participation choices were weaker than correlations with, for example, prior knowledge as evidenced by pretest scores. Overall, in terms of correlations, participation, and assessment attributes clustered together, respectively, with clicker questions being a connecting attribute between the clusters. Performance aside, we found two populations in the course, which, divided along the line of above and below average in-class attendance, exhibited other distinct behavior attributes mostly related to investment of time and effort in the course.
Taking introductory physics in studio, lecture, or online format: What difference does it make in subsequent courses, and for whom
Kortemeyer, Gerd; Kortemeyer, Christine; Bauer, Wolfgang (2023)
Physical Review Physics Education Research
At large institutions of higher education, students frequently have a choice whether to attend the introductory physics sequence asynchronously online, on-site in a traditional lecture setting, or in a reformed studio setting. In this study, we investigate how these different settings are correlated with measures of self-efficacy, interest in physics, and success in subsequent physics and engineering courses, which have the introductory physics sequence as prerequisites. As previous research indicates, some of these measures may depend on gender. We found that the course setting had no significant correlation with the grade in subsequent courses, but that studio settings gave students the feeling of being better prepared, particularly for subsequent courses that included laboratory or recitation components. We also found that gender was correlated with measures of interest in physics, where female students expressed significantly less interest in the subject, regardless of course setting.
Quick-and-Dirty Item Response Theory
Kortemeyer, Gerd (2019)
The Physics Teacher
Using a computer game to teach circuit concepts
Kortemeyer, Gerd; Anderson, Daniel; Desrochers, Ann Marie; et al. (2019)
European Journal of Physics

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Gerd Kortemeyer

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