"I emphasize that wrong answers or different results from the peers around you are still answers... Negative data is still data," she said.
I think this is an important stance to have because it encourages students to use their own thinking skills to come to an answer without fearing its incorrect. The idea that there's wrong or right thinking is what most likely prompts students to rely on AI because they know its factual and may be what their educator is looking for.
Participants this summer expressed shock at what the AI generated: pleasing displays at first glance that, upon deeper inspection, reveal fabricated book titles, gibberish language, incorrect details, photos that weren't of their chosen authors and images that reinforced ethnic or racial stereotypes.
I think this was a powerful way to demonstrate AI's limits. Even though it helps save time critical thinking is something only we can apply. AI is naturally embedded in bias, stereotypes and inaccurate information. This is why our own thinking goes a long way beyond using the tool to generate for us. This exercise was a good way to let students understand that as convenient and as reliable it may seem, it cant accurately produce things we use our own analyzing skills and critical thinking for.
"Without labelling certain things as good or bad, we want to encourage students to think about all the materials [they encounter, but] we don't want them to doubt everything," she added.
"There are certainly students who pick it up gradually over time, by kind of trial and error. But a lot of students don't."
A lot of students don't pick up this skill which is why it's essential to emphasize the kinds of questions to ask and why they're beneficial to the critical thinking development of students. This also helps a lot of them slow on picking up this skill feel less left behind and make them more inclined to try, regardless of being wrong. This helps encourage their learning and deeper thinking instead of having unreliable AI tools do the thinking for them.
One easy way to do that? When a student makes a salient query, instead of just noting "that's a great question," professors could explain precisely why it's great, which gives clarity to the individual and encourages the entire class, he said.
Elaborating on why the question a student asks is great encourages them to continue asking and think critically. It also helps others feel motivated instead of left out because they're now able to understand the types of questions to ask and think to evaluate deeper. They're also able to understand what makes a question a great one so they feel more inclined to think critically and offer different approaches to analyzing materials.
"Critical thinking is essentially about asking questions," whether that's while perusing an article or a social media post, said Louis Newman, author of Thinking Critically in College, from Los Altos, Calif.
I agree with Newman in this passage. Critical thinking focuses heavily on asking questions about the content you're analyzing. When you rely on AI to generate your responses, those skills based on challenging what you're learning and thinking big deteriorate. Those special evaluation tools aren't being developed because you're having a generative source do the thinking for you and in the long run you won't be able to use your own thinking to make predictions about things or become curious.
"You have to make it clear to students precisely what kinds of thinking they're being asked to do, how well they did on it and where they could have done better," he said.
I think this is a smart insight and greatly beneficial to students' learning. When you encourage students to ask questions and demonstrate their thought processes it makes them feel more comfortable challenging their thinking instead of heavily relying on tools to do the "thinking" for them. It also helps to point out what you want them to think about and why, so they can practice using that skill and applying it across other things they're learning. Presenting feedback on how well their thinking was and ways they could improve further encourages them to keep practicing this skill in the future so they can become better at it instead of discouraging them by just pointing out their flaws. Encouraging student's to be wrong also helps them feel comfortable in making mistakes with their own thought processes instead of heavily relying on biased AI tools solely to get the "desired correct" thought process. Critical thinking can only be encouraged when students receive constuctive feedback which is what Newman emphasizes here.