Role Reversal: Fostering Critical Thinking in Higher Education by Teaching AI to Solve Physics Problems

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has disrupted traditional educational strategies, presenting both challenges and opportunities for instructors. This exploratory study presents a pedagogical intervention where 1st-year university students engage in “teaching” LLMs to solve a physics problem, thereby reinforcing their conceptual understanding through the inherent cognitive benefits of teaching, capitalizing on the models' limitations to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and promoting ethical use of AI in education. Post-activity feedback reveals students' nuanced perspectives on the role of AI in learning, offering insights for integrating these tools constructively into the classroom.