Interventions targeting genAI misconceptions, epistemic orientation, and intellectual values to foster critical genAI use¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Based on their finding that knowledge and critical-thinking dispositions predict critical genAI use, the authors recommend that higher education institutions implement interventions addressing these predictors. They suggest general genAI knowledge courses, extended refutation texts for specific misconceptions, and short-term video-based training interventions of the kind that previously fostered epistemic orientation and intellectual values. Modeling examples demonstrating concrete critical-use strategies, such as comparing AI-generated answers with other sources, are proposed for direct promotion of critical use.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Interventions should target the empirically identified predictors: conceptual misconceptions, epistemic orientation, and intellectual values

Constraints¶

• The correlational design does not establish causality; the authors call for experimental evaluation of such interventions

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate university students in higher education

Target Learning Goals¶

• critical and responsible use of generative AI
• critical thinking disposition

Affordances¶

• Protective Factors Against Uncritical Genai Overreliance

Related Strategies¶

• Graduate AI literacy training should promote purposeful, task-oriented, critically supervised GenAI use rather than targeting overall use levels

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Markus H. Hefter, Benjamin Paaßen, Kirsten Berthold. (2026). GenAI Knowledge, Epistemic Orientation, and Intellectual Values Predict Undergraduate Students’ Critical GenAI Use. AI Educ. 2026, 2, 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/aieduc2030027