A $750,000 National Science Foundation grant will enable three discipline-based education research (DBER) faculty members at Cornell to study the use of artificial intelligence tools that support student reflection and build critical thinking skills.
“In the age of generative AI in education, students’ development of critical thinking skills is a major concern,” said Alexandra Werth, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and member of the Duffield Engineering Education Research Institute, the principal investigator on the grant. “Students can use these tools to circumvent or outsource the reasoning processes through which critical thinking skills are developed, allowing generative AI to make decisions for them. At the same time, since generative AI can produce inaccurate or fabricated information, students need critical thinking to determine what to question, what to verify, what to believe and how to act.”
With this project, Werth and collaborators in biology and physics are investigating whether generative AI can be leveraged to develop students’ critical thinking skills by prompting reflection on daily lectures and labs. Co-PIs on the project are Natasha Holmes, the Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), and Michelle Smith, Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences and Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education (A&S).
The heart of the project is the Automated Critical Thinking Reflection (ACTR) tool, which uses generative AI to provide personalized interaction a human instructor might give. The interdisciplinary project, engaging students in physics, biology and engineering courses, will evaluate the role of AI for education research while also using the AI systems to build student reflection skills.
Critical thinking is developed through purposeful reflection on recent lessons, Werth said, a principle well-established in pedagogy but tricky to accomplish, especially in courses with large numbers of students.
“In practice, students view generic reflection questions such as ‘name three things you learned in class today’ as busywork and respond in superficial ways,” she said. “We thought maybe AI could help us.”
The ACTR tool tailors reflection questions to the student and to the class session. It can also help the researchers analyze student responses to determine whether AI-tailored dialogue really does boost critical thinking.
“It’s the idea of having a one-on-one conversation,” said Holmes. “What we’re trying to get close to is if I were to sit down and have this conversation with each student and say, ‘tell me about your teamwork this week. What worked, what didn’t? How can we work together to think about what teamwork looks like and what skills you bring?’”
With hundreds or even thousands of students enrolled in her courses each semester, personalized conversations are not possible with everyone, Holmes said: “We’re hoping the AI can bridge that gap.”
The new NSF grant will leverage two discipline-based education research projects led by Holmes and Smith that used survey tools to measure students’ critical thinking.
With the new funding, the researchers can compare the survey scores to what students are saying in the reflection tool, Werth said.
ACTR is based in the online survey platform Qualtrics and was developed by Werth’s research group, building on research funded initially through Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation, focused on using reflection for teamwork skills. Students will use the platform in courses coming up, as early as this fall.
The grant supports expansion of the AI tool beyond Cornell. The project includes plans to share its tools, data and results with other institutions through workshops, webinars, instructor guides and collaborations.
The AI-enabled reflection tools are part of a larger movement at Cornell and elsewhere to find productive ways to incorporate AI into the classroom, Holmes said. The research component of the grant ensures that instructors are using AI tools critically.
“If we can help students reflect better, to develop these critical thinking skills, I think those would be huge educational wins,” Werth said. “In terms of research, I think we’re all excited about the opportunities generative AI might afford in learning, but we need to do it right. Most of all, this project enables us to be systematic and critical about the levers within generative AI and educational technology design.”
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