Fostering critical thinking in higher education: an intelligent dialogue-based approach empowered by conversational AI

Critical thinking is a kind of higher-order thinking. It is crucial for college students to process complex information, solve practical problems, and develop a sense of innovation and lifelong learning ability. Traditional education models focus on knowledge impartation rather than thinking training, and existing dialogic teaching methods are limited by implementation costs and scalability. This study proposes an Intelligent Dialogue-Based Approach (IDBA) to promote the development of critical thinking in students. To evaluate this method, we employed a single-group pretest-posttest design and conducted an experiment in a reading course at a university in China. 51 freshmen majoring in educational technology were selected as research participants to use IDBA for course learning. The results showed that IDBA could promote the development of critical thinking among college students, while Lag Sequence Analysis (LSA) tracked their cognitive trajectories, revealing a dynamic thinking process of “recognise-understand-analyse-evaluate-create”. In addition, the study promoted the normative use of AI among students and encouraged teachers to actively integrate AI technology into the teaching process. These findings can provide a reference for the use of conversational AI in higher education to promote the development of higher-order thinking among students.