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arXiv · 2609.06212

SLATE: Are AI-Generated Slides Educationally Effective? A Benchmark for Language Teaching Quality and Learner Knowledge Acquisition

Jingzhuo Wu·Jiajun Zhang·Liu Yi·Leqi Zheng·Yuheng Jing·Xinyuan Zhou·Quan yang
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Abstract

LLMs have achieved remarkable capabilities in generating language teaching slides. However, a critical mismatch persists between visual polish and actual instructional effectiveness. To address this gap, we introduce SLATE (Slide-based Learning Assessment for Teaching Effectiveness), the first benchmark that evaluates AI-generated language teaching slides through instructional effectiveness and learner knowledge acquisition. SLATE transforms linguistics olympiad puzzles from low-resource languages with negligible web presence into 90 standardized instructional units comprising 1,133 assessable items, paired with a structured course outline and matched near- and far-transfer test sets. This pretest-posttest design eliminates pretrained knowledge leakage, ensuring gains reflect learning rather than prior recall. Using VLMs as scalable learner proxies and directionally supported by a three-system human pilot, our results show that content validity exhibits a weak association with learning gain, while pedagogical design exhibits a robust positive association. Moreover, most systems show a significant gap between near- and far-transfer accuracy, and even frontier models can produce negative learning gains. SLATE reveals a dissociation between artifact quality and instructional effectiveness, calling for a paradigm shift in how generative teaching systems are built, evaluated, and deployed.

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Jingzhuo Wu, Jiajun Zhang, Liu Yi, Leqi Zheng, Yuheng Jing, Xinyuan Zhou, Quan yang. 2026-09-05. SLATE: Are AI-Generated Slides Educationally Effective? A Benchmark for Language Teaching Quality and Learner Knowledge Acquisition. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06212

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