Agree. Just pay attention to the follow up questions a learner is asking to see the progress. If the follow up is just "continue", "go on", "next" or a non-sequitur then it is smell of a stall. If it is challenging or filling a gap in the answer then it is progress. So production from the learner is the only signal of worth here not the quality of LLM response, the time spent or the ability of the learner to reproduce the facts given by the LLM.