Artificial intelligence to develop outcomes for critical thinking: A helping start and still up to the educator to develop the final outcome

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely seen as a big part of the future of education with many areas already affected, for example, data mining, data retrieval and diagnostics, particularly radiology. Critical thinking is widely seen as an essential skill for a successful dentist. While critical thinking has received much thematic attention, the literature on explicit learning outcomes is sparse and the literature for learning guidance end performance assessment is sparser. Dental education faces similar challenges in articulating learning outcomes, learning guides, performance assessments for different perspectives on critical thinking, including ethics, treatment planning, risk assessment for caries, periodontitis and Geriatrics, Interprofessional Practice, Evidence-based Dentistry, social responsibility, empathy projection, technology decision making.^1-11

The purpose of this essay is to begin a discussion on ways AI can facilitate the development of outcomes for critical thinking—followed by learning guides and assessments. The selection of critical thinking can precede similar discussions on AI and outcomes for other domains beyond knowledge and technical. A starter question is, ‘How can AI help professors to articulate learning outcomes beyond knowledge and technical, selecting critical thinking as a starting point?’ The authors have prompted the AI model ChatGPT 3.5 (OpenAI Inc.) with the following prompt ‘What are appropriate learning outcomes for critical thinking?’ The details about the prompt and the AI model responses are in Table 1. A rich assortment of perspectives appears that serve as strong background for the educator developing an understanding of the complexities of critical thinking in general. Several of these have been addressed with more explicit articulation of outcomes related to specific dental education goals as well as learning guidance and performance assessments (References on treatment planning, IPP, EBD, Literature search and critique, risk assessment for caries and geriatrics, technology decision making, etc.) This level of analysis falls short of articulating the explicit learning outcomes—what the student is to do—to lead to learning guidance and performance assessment. A comment from the AI is, ‘Learning outcomes for critical thinking can vary depending on the specific context…’ A question arises as to who determines the context?

A further question can be, ‘How can the articulation of learning outcomes lead to learning guidance and performance assessment – what the student is to do and how do we know if the student did it?’ The authors have prompted the same AI model using the following prompt: ‘How can the articulation of learning outcomes lead to learning guidance and performance assessment – what the student is to do and how do we know if the student did it?’ The narrative response of GTP is ‘The articulation of learning outcomes is a crucial step in educational design and assessment. Learning outcomes define what students are expected to know, understand, and be able to do by the end of a learning experience. When well-articulated, learning outcomes serve as a foundation for effective learning guidance and performance assessment. Here's how this process works’. The details about this second prompt and the AI model responses are in Table 2. As in Table 1, a rich array of subcategories appears that will benefit the dental educator in adding depth to a culture of critical thinking. Yet, the explicit learning guidance on ways the student can think and what the student is to do remains elusive. Without an explicit learning guide, an outcomes-based assessment similarly remains elusive.

In conclusion, AI can offer a rich background on critical thinking (also available in the current literature) and falls short of offering explicit learning guidance and performance assessment. The ‘context-specific’ part means that (for the time being) development of critical thinking learning guidance and performance assessment will still call on the active mind of the dental educator.

David C. Johnsen and Leonardo Marchini participated proactively and equally in developing the concept for the paper, developing the methods, executing the methods, interpreting the results and drafting the manuscript.

No external funding.

The authors have no conflicts of interest.

Not human subject research.