Measuring Understanding When AI Can Produce the Answer
Generative AI has broken the link between what a student submits and what a student knows. This paper explains how Axiom Flow addresses that by changing the task itself: students teach an AI student, Sam, who starts each session holding deliberately wrong beliefs, and reports what a 100-student deployment shows, including what we do not yet claim.
Three properties that make this different
from an AI tutor or a quiz generator
The grade is not produced by an AI
Sam's answers are compared to the correct answers by direct string match. No language model judges the student's work.
The unit of assessment is a transferred concept
Each misconception maps to exactly one exam question. A wrong answer identifies precisely which idea failed to transfer.
The process is fully recorded
Sam's complete mental state is stored after every teaching turn, so an instructor can see not just the final result but the path a student's explanation took.
Deployment evidence
Axiom Flow ran as a graded component in a second-year Computer Systems Programming module at the Department of Computer Engineering, University of Peradeniya.
14
Graded assignments
100
Students, one cohort
52%
Voluntary survey response rate
86.5%
Said teaching Sam beat studying alone
What we do not claim
Institutions evaluating assessment technology are entitled to a clear statement of limits. The white paper states them plainly:
Not yet validated against conventional assessment outcomes. The correlation study is the necessary next step.
Evidence comes from a single context: one module, one instructor, one institution, one discipline.
Question quality is not calibrated the way research-grade concept inventories are.
Knowledge isolation is enforced by instruction, not by architecture, and is not yet quantified.
Outsourcing is reduced, not eliminated. A student can still transcribe an AI-generated explanation.
See the full methodology, citations, and validation plan.
Download the complete white paper for the research behind Axiom Flow, or book a walkthrough to see the teaching-based assessment flow on your own course material.