How a professor is using AI to foster critical thinking in the humanities

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into higher education, questions arise about its role in fostering critical thinking and inquiry—especially in the humanities. How can open-access generative AI tools enhance students’ curiosity while promoting critical questioning skills? What strategies can educators use to teach with, rather than against, AI?

Alexa Alica Joubin, a professor of English and co-director of the Digital Humanities Institute at the George Washington University, discusses how AI can serve as a heuristic tool in humanities education.

Her latest research paper, published in General Aspects of Applying Generative AI in Higher Education, explores the trustworthiness of AI as an educational aid and the importance of cultivating critical AI literacy.

Through case studies in teaching Shakespearean performance, she has developed an AI teaching assistant that helps students refine their research questions, engage in iterative learning, and build essential skills like metacognition, bias detection, and prompt engineering.

“AI can simulate fluency, but it doesn’t inherently think. It’s up to educators to ensure students understand its limitations and learn to ask better questions,” says Joubin. “Rather than treating AI as an answer machine, we can use it to deepen inquiry and redefine critical thinking in the humanities.”