Cornell researchers have received a $750,000 National Science Foundation grant to test whether an artificial intelligence tool can help college students reflect on their coursework and develop critical thinking skills. The project will involve physics, biology and engineering classes.
Alexandra Werth, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and member of Cornell's Duffield Engineering Education Research Institute, is the grant's principal investigator. She said the project addresses a tension in classroom AI use: Students can let generative tools do the reasoning for them, but also need to judge when those tools produce inaccurate or fabricated information.
The researchers will study a system called the Automated Critical Thinking Reflection tool, or ACTR. It uses generative AI to give students personalized prompts about daily lectures and labs, in an effort to provide some of the interaction a human instructor might offer.
The team plans to examine whether those prompts help students reflect on course material and strengthen the reasoning they use to decide what to question or verify. The grant supports an investigation of that approach; Cornell has not reported that the tool improves critical thinking.
Werth's collaborators are Natasha Holmes, an associate professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Michelle Smith, a professor and senior associate dean for undergraduate education in the same college. All three are discipline-based education research faculty members.
The project spans courses in physics, biology and engineering. That range will let the researchers examine the tool across different subjects while assessing AI's role in education research and student reflection.
Werth said students' ability to think critically is particularly important when AI can make decisions for them or present information that is wrong. The Cornell announcement did not provide a study schedule, number of participating students or a date when results are expected.
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