Why AI Tutoring Can’t Replace Class-Specific Support – and What We’re Doing About It
AI tutoring is very popular these days, but it's important to know its limits. In this post, I go over why AI tutoring often struggles with providing class-specific exam support.
It happens all too often these days. You spend two hours asking ChatGPT or another AI tutoring tool about organic chemistry mechanisms. You feel like you understand it. Then you open your CHEM 205 midterm, and nothing looks familiar
There’s no question that AI can be a useful study tool if you’re brushing up on a concept or looking for a simple explanation of a topic. But once it’s time to prepare for a specific course or exam, it starts to fall apart. And if you’re relying on it to help you pass COMP 248 or COMM 225, you’re probably wasting your time.
Why AI Tutoring Struggles at the University Level
AI is trained on public data. That’s great for general knowledge, but it becomes a serious problem once you’re dealing with the specific requirements of your university course. It doesn’t know your professor’s style. It doesn’t know what kind of questions will be on your final. And it definitely doesn’t know how your professor or the TA is going to grade.
Your professor’s locked most of that knowledge behind closed doors: Moodle pages, in-class explanations, group chats, old midterms, and department quirks that only students or teaching assistants would know. You can’t Google your way into that, and AI can’t either.
AI might explain recursion perfectly, but it won't know that your COMP 248 professor always includes a specific type of tree traversal question worth 15% of the final. It might know about Porter’s Five Forces, but not the exact points for each force that your professor will be giving points for in COMM 401.
Even if you tell the AI what class you’re studying for, it’ll still only pull limited info from the web, and then combine it with general info on the subject. You’re not going to get that exact class-specific knowledge for the exam.
So what you get instead are vague answers and confident-sounding explanations that almost match what you’re looking for. But “almost” can be a dangerous waste of time when you’re stressed, behind on your work, and trying to get ready for an exam.
What Tutor Spaces Does Differently
We built Tutor Spaces on a simple idea: the best person to help you with your course is someone who’s actually taken it.
Remember, most of the time exams aren’t necessarily about how well you know a topic, but how well you know a class.
That’s why Tutor Spaces’ tutors create and post content tailored to your exact course codes. They don’t give you a generic chemistry overview - they give you help for CHEM 205. They don’t offer a vague walkthrough of “algorithms” - they deliver a targeted review for COMP 352, built by someone who knows exactly what’s on the final.
Tutors on our platform offer live-streamed crash courses, recorded content, study notes, and private sessions. And all this content is tailored to the actual course you're taking. It’s not AI guessing what might be useful. It’s real people sharing what actually helped them succeed in the same class.
Save Time. Get the Right Info. Pass the Class.
If you need to know the basic info, by all means play around with AI. But when it comes to exam prep, it’s all too easy to spend two hours talking to an AI, only to realize you still don’t understand what your professor wants. Or worse, you think you’ve got it right, but when you open the midterm, none of it looks familiar. And you’re not answering questions in a way that will get you points.
That’s where Tutor Spaces comes in. Instead of spending your time second-guessing the material, you can learn directly from someone who knows it inside and out. Someone who’s been through the assignments, sat through the lectures, and understands how your professor likes to test things.
Because when it comes to university-level tutoring, no AI can replace experience and class-specific knowledge.
Click here to sign up for Tutor Spaces today!
