Impact of Generative AI Tools on Students’ Critical Thinking and Learning Outcomes

सार

The educational system currently faces a major academic dispute which examines how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity AI and Claude affect students' critical thinking skills and their ability to learn academic material. This paper reports the findings of a quasi-experimental study which investigated 240 undergraduate students from four colleges in Pune India to study how structured GenAI tool integration affected their critical thinking skills and learning achievement across six critical thinking dimensions and four learning outcome categories during a 16-week academic semester. The study used a pre-test/post-test control group design which showed that the experimental group (n = 120) who learned through structured GenAI-integrated instruction achieved better results across all assessment criteria than the control group (n = 120) who received traditional teaching methods. The assessment results showed that students made their greatest progress in Creative Thinking which increased by 20.3 points with a standard effect size of d = 1.50 and Information Synthesis which increased by 18.9 points with a standard effect size of d = 1.39. The research study established specific situations which demonstrate that GenAI dependency leads to decreased ability for independent critical thinking. The researchers developed the CRITIC model as a teaching framework which enables educational institutions to use GenAI technology in a responsible way.

Keywords: generative AI, critical thinking, learning outcomes, ChatGPT, educational technology, higher education, AI literacy, CRITIC model, quasi-experimental, Pune.