Explainpaper.com -- Not just for articles

One of my favorite observations about educational technology is this: sometimes a butter knife is a screwdriver.

If you have ever used a butter knife to loosen or tighten a screw because it was handier than a screw driver, you know that sometimes something designed for one purpose can be used for another.

So it was in a little test I did with Explainpaper.com, "the tool that explains research papers while you read them," according to the site's welcome email. Explainpaper is elegantly easy to use. Upload a research article, then after it is loaded, highlight a passage that you would like explained and then wait for the explanation. You also have an option to ask a follow up question. I found that it can be used for explaining writing other than a research paper or article.

Before looking at non research article example, here's an example of a research article where I used the follow up question feature. Note, the article is: Harris, C. S., Cadle, L., & Monske, E. A. (2022). Blurred boundaries: Post-pandemic perspectives of digital writing pedagogies special issue introduction. Computers and Composition, 66, 102743. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2022.102743.

You'll note that I used a journal article that is not technical. It is the editors' introduction to a themed issue of the journal. But you can see Image 1 how Explainpaper provided an explanation, allowed me to write a follow up question, and then supplied an answer (purple box). I had highlighted the first three paragraphs under the "Liz" section shown. Using the follow up question feature (which is pictured in the graphic at the top of this post) removed the highlighting.

Explainpaper for Literature

I did something different in my butter-knife experiment. I uploaded a PDF of Hamlet, which I found from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Then I chose a short passage and asked for an explanation. I chose Shakespeare because I remember how much I, even as an English major, relied on good explanations to understand Shakespeare on a first reading. I had the Riverside Edition of Shakespeare back in the early 80's when I took a Shakespeare course. I needed its annotations and glossary to make my way through. I also consulted Cliffs Notes. Over time, of course, as read more Shakespeare, I ceased to need those supports as much.

So with Shakespeare, would a learner who is reading his works for the first time find Explainpaper useful? Would it help instructors move students to analysis and interpretation more fully than is often the case? In many literature courses, when students first write about literature, they do what Explainpaper does -- they retell the story in their own words. That's a necessary step toward understanding and analysis. For difficult works, a lot of student cognitive bandwidth, and class calendar time, goes into understanding, leaving little left for analysis, interpretation, or appreciation. Thus it is not unusual for a literature professor to get papers where the majority of the text is a student saying, "What the author is saying is..." which leads into a recap of the narrative.

So I wonder how this technology might change how students learn to read and think about what they're reading. But first, let's look at what happens with a bit of Shakespeare in Explainpaper.com.

Here is the very short Hamlet passage I highlighted, Act 1, Scene 1, lines 28 - 34:

Marcellus:

Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy

And will not let belief take hold of him

Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.

Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night,

That, if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

And here are three different explanations of the passage, in the order generated. (Each time you re-highlight the passage, a new and slightly different explanation is generated.)

One: Horatio does not believe the ghost exists even though it has already been seen twice. Because of this, the speaker of the passage has asked Horatio to join them and be a witness should the ghost appear again. That way, Horatio can see the ghost and accept that it is real, if it appears again.

Two: Horatio is skeptical and does not believe in the apparition they have seen two times. Therefore, the speaker has asked him to accompany them so that if they see the apparition again, Horatio can evaluate it and talk to it.

Three: Horatio does not believe in what he and the two others have seen. He is skeptical and does not accept it as real. He has decided to join them on their watch of the night, so if they see the same apparition again, he will be able to confirm with his own eyes that it was real and talk to it.

There are differences in each explanation. The third I would call the weakest because it says Horatio has decided to to join the 'two others' when there is not evidence for that in the passage. But taken together, they can help a student struggling with the language of Shakespeare get a better gist.

This is still first draft explication. If I were encouraging students to use such software, I would have a class session where as a group we conduct experiments to teach them how to assess the value and accuracy of the explanation provided. In that way, this software is similar to a tool such as a citation generator. The citation tool's output is only first draft. It needs to be checked for accuracy -- such as correct punctuation of an article title -- and other details.

But used with care and with an awareness of the software's limits, tools such as Explainpaper offer exciting possibilities for helping learners. In this example, students understand Horatio's doubt about the ghost more clearly, and how it will be resolved. It tells them something about the kind of person Horatio is, and how he sees the world and makes decisions in it.

Again, the key would be teaching students not to copy and paste the explications into their own paper directly, but to use them as a springboard for their own thinking.

Explainpaper for Textbooks

I can also this technology being adapted by textbook publishers, both for profit and eventually open source. A student reading a more technical textbook might find the Explainpaper tool useful for making things clearer, the way faculty might do for them in a lecture. The risk here would be that students would reduce their own use of writing to learn, perhaps cutting back on note taking and writing their own summaries.

But that might also be the opportunity. What if in order to see an explanation, a student highlights a passage and first writes their own explanation or summary of it before the AI produces one that the student can compare to theirs?

For example, here's an OER textbook chapter on nutrition, as rendered in Explainpaper.

And wouldn't the "Ask a follow up question," for a student studying a textbook, be recast as an AI study buddy or AI tutor? Just a thought.

For example, for the highlight in Image 2, I asked, "What is more dangerous, over nutrition or undernutrition?"

The response: Overnutrition is linked to more dangerous diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Undernutrition can also have serious health consequences, but it is not as prevalent in the United States compared to other countries.