Beyond the Bot: Teaching Students to Think When Thinking is Optional

Why wrestle with a hard question when a perfectly good answer is one click away? That easy choice is available to millions of students every day, and it is costing them the one thing AI cannot give back: the ability to think. This session offers a framework for redesigning instruction so AI becomes a creative accelerator, not an academic replacement, because the one who does the thinking is the one who does the learning. Explore how to apply principles of cognitive load theory to instructional design so AI reduces the noise without eliminating the thinking that makes learning stick. Drawing on research into metacognition and self-regulated learning, identify specific instructional moves that push students to monitor, question and own their thinking rather than hand it off. You will also learn to pinpoint which parts of a task actually build thinking skills, then redesign instruction so AI handles the grunt work while students do the work that matters.