Unlocking Scientific Concepts: How Effective Are LLM-Generated Analogies for Student Understanding and Classroom Practice?

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of LLM-generated analogies for teaching scientific concepts (biology and physics) through controlled in-class tests with high school students and classroom field studies with teachers. The study measures student understanding, learning outcomes, potential over-reliance, and teacher satisfaction with LLM-generated analogies, culminating in the development of a practical system for teachers to generate and refine teaching analogies.

Teaching scientific concepts is essential but challenging, and analogies help students connect new concepts to familiar ideas. Advancements in large language models (LLMs) enable generating analogies, yet their effectiveness in education remains underexplored. In this paper, we first conducted a two-stage study involving high school students and teachers to assess the effectiveness of LLM-generated analogies in biology and physics through a controlled in-class test and a classroom field study. T

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