Step 1 of 5 · The task

Explore AI and student learning, from the inside

Before you read anything about the research, you use an AI tool yourself, following a simple three-step protocol. The protocol is the task, and it is also the method: you go through what you might later ask your students to do.

First: formulate your question

Decide what you want to explore before you open any AI tool. The question should be about what happens to students' learning when they use AI, and it should be yours: something you have wondered or worried about in your own students and your own discipline. Then write it down.

Four examples, to get you started rather than to choose from:

“What happens to students' learning when they use AI to solve assignments?”
“Can AI support deep learning, or does it make students intellectually passive?”
“What is the difference between using AI as a thinking partner and letting AI do the thinking?”
“Does using AI for writing tasks undermine students' ability to develop their own voice?”

What you write on these pages stays in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

My question

The three-step protocol

Work through your question in three stages.

Before · approx. 5 min

Write down what you already think

Before you open the AI, write a short note, just a few sentences, on your own position. What do you already believe or suspect about your question? What makes you uncertain?

It does not have to be polished. You are getting your own thinking down before the AI has a chance to shape it, and you will come back to it afterwards.

What I already think, and what makes me uncertain

During · approx. 15–30 min

Explore your question with AI

Now take your question to an AI tool, such as Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot, and have the conversation. Follow the threads that interest you. Push back where you disagree, or where an answer feels too simple.

To go deeper, try Claude's deep research mode, which searches the web and synthesises sources instead of drawing only on the model's training data.

At some point during the conversation, pause and ask yourself:

The pause question“Is AI helping me think right now, or is it thinking for me?”

What I noticed at the pause (optional)

After · approx. 5–10 min

Reflect on what you learned, and how you learned it

Go back to what you wrote before the AI conversation. Compare it to where you ended up.

Your question

Before, you wrote

Now ask yourself three things:

What did AI say, and what matched or didn't match your own experience?

What surprised you?

Did you end up with a clearer answer, or with more questions?

There is no right answer. A question like yours has no clean resolution, and the module chose that on purpose, because the research shows that AI can both support and undermine learning, depending heavily on how it is used. If your conversation left you with that same ambivalence, you are in a good place to start.

When you're done, move to Step 2 and write one short reflection from your experience.