Rethinking Homework
in the Age of AI

Zilin Jiang
Arizona State University
September 24, 2025

The New Reality

  • AI tools now everywhere.
  • Students
    • can instantly "solve",
    • but may not understand.
  • Hallucination hazard

Faculty Perspective

When I see AI-assisted work,
I feel ____________________.

Cracks in Traditional Homework

  • Slow feedback loop
    • Students wait a week or more
      before discovering mistakes.
  • Process invisible
    • Grading focuses on final answers,
      not how students think.
  • Motivation suffers
    • With no timely guidance or
      recognition of effort,
      engagement drops.

Rethinking the Goal

  • Imagine a tireless graduate TA.
    • Works 24/7.
    • Prompts thinking.
    • Encouraging, patient, passionate.
    • Follows the instructor's guidance.
  • If we could give every student this experience,
    homework could become a true space for learning.

The Surprise

This ideal TA exists today

…but it's not a person.

Introducing semina.ai

  • Provides immediate, guided feedback.
  • Keeps the instructor in the loop.
  • Encourages exploration and rewards effort.
  • Even catches instructor mistakes.

Student Experience 1

Guided problem-solving: solicits ideas, not answers.

Just tell me the answer.
I won't give the answer. Let's work it out step by step.
Try it myself

Student Experience 2

Low entry barrier: plain text input; learns LaTeX along the way.

How do you type the upside-down A?
Use \forall to get ∀.
Try it myself

Student Experience 3

Language flexibility: students can ask or explain in their own language.

Avant de commencer la preuve, comment dire cela en anglais?
Here's the math vocabulary: contrapositive = contraposée, …
Try it myself

Student Experience 4

Thoughtful engagement: responds to students' reasoning

Counterexample with a = 1/4 and b = 1/2 shows the statement is false. Shouldn't a, b be integers?
Good point. Yes, the problem should specify that a and b are integers.
Try it myself

Faculty Experience

  • Simple onboarding, minimal technical overhead.
    • Sign up in seconds.
    • When giving instructions,
      enter only key ideas and concepts.
  • Faculty can iterate and improve quickly.
    • Faculty can view student sessions to spot
      misunderstandings and refine instructions.
    • Planned feature: a supervising AI that
      alerts you to potential issues automatically.

Early Phenomena

  • Persistent engagement
    • Students use it beyond class hours.
  • Expanded capacity
    • Faculty save hours each week.
  • Organic demand
    • Students upload problems themselves.

Our Team & Vision

  • Partner Tao
    • ex-TikTok product manager & experienced engineer.
  • Long-term goal
    • a collaborative, open AI platform for learning.

Join the Experiment

Shape the next generation of pedagogy

Try it now at semina.ai

  • Sign up for a free account
  • Clone a demo problem from today
  • Design your own problem
  • Send the link to your students
  • Tell us how you use it in your class
Zilin Jiang
Arizona State University
[email protected]