Abstract
Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to tackle many longstanding educational challenges, including helping students comprehend difficult textbook material. Textbooks are considered the gold- standard for rigorous and expert-developed educational content, yet still pose challenges to students who struggle with the complexity of textbook language. A strength of large language models (LLMs) is their ability to manipulate text according to specific requirements. An LLM was harnessed to create a “simplifier” tool in a higher education ereader platform, allowing students to select a textbook passage and receive a simplified version of that content. In this study, we analyzed 54,371 simplifier interactions to compare the original textbook content and simplified versions according to estimated readability, lexical and syntactic simplification, and semantic fidelity. Results indicate that the simplifier tool was able to reduce complexity of the original text while maintaining meaning, laying groundwork for future studies involving student perception and comprehension outcomes. The practical implications of this tool for enhancing textbook accessibility and supporting student comprehension are discussed.
