Promoting a Sustainable Education Perspective Through Critical Thinking Exercises Without AI Support

Undergraduate students’ use of generative AI has raised concerns, particularly about its negative impact on the development and practice of critical thinking competencies. These competencies are especially important to young women of a society emerging from patriarchy, whose employment opportunities rest on counteracting gender stereotypes. The present field study examined students’ responses to being compelled to exercise critical thinking competencies without technological aids. To this end, at an English-medium university, all written assignments of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) course of the general education curriculum were either carried out at home (control condition) or in class (experimental condition). Introduction to Psychology was selected because it enrolled both STEM and non-STEM female students. Assignments and exam questions assessing competency in analytical processing (a critical thinking operation that aligned with level 4 of the Bloom Taxonomy) were used to evaluate students’ performance along with outcome predictions, engagement, self-efficacy, and attendance measures. Although at the beginning of the course, students’ analytical competencies did not differ between conditions, STEM students who wrote assignments in class spent more time completing the final exam, made more accurate outcome predictions, and yielded higher performance in analytical exam questions than STEM students who completed assignments at home. Non-STEM students who wrote assignments in class only yielded more accurate predictions than those who wrote assignments at home. The results of this study highlight the relevance of individual differences, such as the choice of academic major, in the impact of assessment strategies, curtailing the overuse and misuse of generative AI in the classroom.