AI-Augmented Reflection to Support and Assess Critical Thinking in Undergraduate STEM Education

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving how undergraduate STEM students develop critical thinking through guided reflection across multiple disciplines and learning environments. Critical thinking is essential for students preparing for STEM careers, but instructors are limited in ways to help students examine their reasoning, connect course ideas to disciplinary practice, and receive timely support in large courses. Reflection can help students build these abilities, but traditional reflection activities often rely on rigid prompts to all students and can be difficult for instructors to interpret at scale. This Level 2 Engaged Student Learning project plans to study an AI-augmented reflection tool that provides adaptive follow-up prompts to help students deepen their thinking about course experiences in physics, biology, biomedical engineering, and related STEM contexts. The significance of the project lies in its potential to strengthen students’ critical thinking while also giving instructors practical information about how students make sense of their learning. The goals of the project are to optimize an AI-augmented reflection tool, investigate how reflection quality relates to gains in domain-specific critical thinking, and examine whether reflective critical thinking practices developed in introductory courses transfer to later STEM learning environments. The scope of the project includes implementation across multiple STEM courses, disciplines, and institutions. The project plans to use discipline-based critical thinking assessments and a qualitative coding framework for analyzing reflection quality. The research will advance understanding of the conditions under which AI-supported reflection can improve student learning and how generative AI can be used responsibly as a scalable form of formative support. Project activities also include assessment, evaluation, instructor-facing dashboards, implementation guides, workshops, and dissemination of findings to STEM education researchers and instructors. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.