Higher Education Category Submission

814 – AI-Driven Critical Thinking Coach

This project proposes an innovative approach to advancing Critical Thinking (CT) education among primary and secondary school students, equipping them with essential 21st-century competencies to navigate an increasingly complex information landscape. Addressing systemic challenges—such as excessive teacher workloads, limited specialist training, and the labor-intensive development of effective CT materials—the initiative leverages state-of-the-art AI technologies to deliver scalable, high-quality educational support.

At its core is an AI-driven Critical Thinking Coach, envisioned as a 24/7 intelligent mentor inspired by historical figures like Confucius and Socrates. Through real-time interaction, the Coach fosters inquiry, argument analysis, and reflective reasoning, transforming CT education into an interactive, learner-centered, and adaptive experience for K–12 students.

The project’s architecture integrates three key components: a curated repository of high-quality educational content, advanced questioning strategies, and a comprehensive library of CT education frameworks . A fundamental innovation lies in its interdisciplinary collaboration—partnering with the Georg Eckert Institute (Germany) for a robust K-12 textbook corpus, the China Association of Logic for structured CT methodologies, and the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA) to ensure alignment with global literacy assessment standards. The applicant’s distinguished academic record, including a GEI Fellowship and a Best Paper Award in logic education, underscores the project’s credibility and potential impact.

Technologically, the initiative employs advanced multi-agent systems, dynamic workflow architectures, and adaptive learning pathways tailored to individual learners. The platform supports both B2B (educator tools) and B2C (personalized student experiences) models, ensuring broad applicability.

Beyond academic contributions, the project aims to develop patent-pending software with a clear commercialization roadmap targeting educational institutions and EdTech platforms. In the long term, it aspires to build a comprehensive AI-driven ecosystem that fosters not only critical thinking but also communication, creativity, collaboration, and cultural literacy—the full spectrum of the 21st-century "5C" competencies.

Our solution leverages advanced generative AI technologies to enhance Critical Thinking (CT) skills through an AI-driven education expert system. The platform’s core functionalities include: (1) providing high-quality reading materials tailored to appropriate cognitive levels, (2) automatically generating CT-focused questions based on established teaching frameworks and a comprehensive knowledge base, and (3) adapting subsequent questions based on student feedback and error patterns to continuously develop their CT abilities. This adaptive process ensures that students engage deeply with the material, fostering essential lifelong skills. The platform operates on both B2B and B2C models, offering educator tools for seamless integration into existing curricula and personalized student experiences for broad applicability.

Technologically, the project integrates three essential components to ensure the professionalism and reliability of AI outputs. First, we collaborate with the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany to build a curated repository of K-12 educational content, ensuring that the reading materials are both age-appropriate and cognitively suitable. Second, we partner with the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA) to align our questioning strategies with PIRLS reading assessment standards, ensuring that our questions effectively measure and develop critical thinking. Third, we incorporate structured CT education methodologies from the China Association of Logic and the International Association of Logic to design advanced questioning strategies that guide students through a step-by-step CT education path.

Considering the practical side of education, I define the success of this project by three key elements: it must be seamless, avoiding any additional burden on teachers by being user-friendly and simple to implement; highly adaptable, allowing integration with existing educational content to complement current curricula; and sustainably long-term, capable of continuous updates to remain relevant and effective. Corresponding metrics will reflect learning outcomes and emotional feedback from teachers and learners, with user retention as the core metric.

Market demand is affirmed, focusing on user experience. With my engineering expertise, I can develop prototypes. Additionally, we will partner with schools to conduct surveys and pilot programs to validate and refine our solution.

Our solution leverages advanced generative AI technologies to enhance Critical Thinking (CT) skills through an AI-driven education expert system. The platform’s core functionalities include: (1) providing high-quality reading materials tailored to appropriate cognitive levels, (2) automatically generating CT-focused questions based on established teaching frameworks and a comprehensive knowledge base, and (3) adapting subsequent questions based on student feedback and error patterns to continuously develop their CT abilities. This adaptive process ensures that students engage deeply with the material, fostering essential lifelong skills. The platform operates on both B2B and B2C models, offering educator tools for seamless integration into existing curricula and personalized student experiences for broad applicability.

Technologically, the project integrates three essential components to ensure the professionalism and reliability of AI outputs. First, we collaborate with the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany to build a curated repository of K-12 educational content, ensuring that the reading materials are both age-appropriate and cognitively suitable. Second, we partner with the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA) to align our questioning strategies with PIRLS reading assessment standards, ensuring that our questions effectively measure and develop critical thinking. Third, we incorporate structured CT methodologies from the China Association of Logic and the International Association of Logic to design advanced questioning strategies that guide students through a step-by-step CT education path.

Considering the practical side of education, I define the success of this project by three key elements: it must be seamless, avoiding any additional burden on teachers by being user-friendly and simple to implement; highly adaptable, allowing integration with existing educational content to complement current curricula; and sustainably long-term, capable of continuous updates to remain relevant and effective. Corresponding metrics will reflect learning outcomes and emotional feedback from teachers and learners, with user retention as the core metric.

Market demand is affirmed, focusing on user experience. With my engineering expertise, I can develop prototypes. Additionally, we will partner with schools to conduct surveys and pilot programs to validate and refine our solution.

Stream 1

I would like to emphasize that the innovation embodied in this project is not pursued for its own sake. As outlined above, the core objective is to enable critical thinking (CT) to occur routinely and sustainably within educational systems. Our approach achieves meaningful innovation while fully respecting educational practices, representing constructive enhancement rather than disruptive transformation.

First, in terms of content, our focus is on cultivating fundamental CT skills rather than delivering subject-specific knowledge. CT is operationalized through reading comprehension and debate activities, ensuring tangible, visible outcomes that sustain motivation among schools and parents. The platform preserves traditional educational workflows, whether supporting B2B lesson planning or B2C self-directed learning, augmenting existing practices rather than imposing new burdens. Additionally, we foster CT-focused community activities, ensuring that technology retains a human-centered dimension.

Second, from a technical perspective, we leverage generative AI to enhance operational efficiency while maintaining professional quality standards. This is achieved through a meticulously structured prompt architecture, incorporating a curated content database, advanced questioning strategies, and a comprehensive CT knowledge graph. Preliminary collaborations with potential partners across key development stages have already been initiated.

Third, in terms of product design, we introduce Dynamic AI Characters based on Jungian archetypes. Unlike traditional AI, which can appear emotionless or artificially perfect, these characters engage as emotionally intelligent entities, enhancing students’ social intelligence alongside critical thinking development.

Ultimately, true innovation lies in establishing stable, sustainable conditions where CT can take root organically. By aligning technological advancement with educational realities, this project ensures lasting, systemic change—its most significant and enduring contribution.

Our project focuses on developing Critical Thinking (CT) as a fundamental meta-literacy, ensuring inherent scalability. First, CT can be seamlessly integrated across diverse disciplines, encompassing both the humanities and STEM fields. This adaptability enables our solution to support varied curricula, making it applicable from regional education systems such as the Greater Bay Area to global contexts. By aligning CT instruction with distinct disciplinary needs, we can broaden our user base and enhance educational outcomes universally.

Second, CT represents a long-term developmental framework spanning all educational levels. In primary and secondary education, CT is embedded within subject learning to foster analytical and evaluative skills. At the university level, it becomes central to research methodologies and advanced problem-solving, while in the professional domain, it underpins decision-making and innovation. Our system is designed to evolve alongside learners, providing continuous support throughout educational and career trajectories, thus promoting sustainability through lifelong learning.

Third, we envision building a comprehensive AI-driven ecosystem that cultivates the full spectrum of 21st-century competencies—critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration, and cultural literacy ("5Cs"). This includes establishing a credit bank for advanced cognitive skills, allowing learners to systematically track and develop their competencies. Such a holistic model ensures that our solution remains relevant and responsive as educational demands evolve.

Initially, we will concentrate on CT, collaborating with key educators and schools to develop a committed user base. This focused approach facilitates iterative product refinement through evidence-based research. Upon achieving a robust and reliable end-to-end service system, scaling will occur naturally via replication and network effects.

By fostering a community of engaged users and maintaining adaptive innovation, we ensure long-term user engagement, environmental sustainability through digital-first delivery models, and a solution capable of evolving alongside the needs of future learners.

Educational and examination reforms increasingly emphasize improving learning outcomes; however, they often inadvertently exacerbate existing inequities. As critical thinking (CT) becomes a key criterion in college admissions—both in written assessments and interviews—the demands placed on educators have risen significantly. Compared to traditional education systems that prioritize rote memorization, effective CT education requires significantly higher instructional quality. This heightened demand is particularly challenging for socioeconomically and culturally disadvantaged communities, where access to highly qualified teachers remains limited, thus creating new layers of educational inequality.

Our AI-driven CT education expert system directly addresses these challenges by democratizing access to high-quality CT resources. By transforming elite CT educational materials into accessible, low-cost, and adaptive tools, we ensure that effective CT instruction is available to all students, irrespective of their background. This initiative strongly aligns with broader social goals of equity and inclusion, striving to eliminate systemic barriers to quality education.

Our solution enhances the lives of primary beneficiaries—students and educators—by delivering tailored, interactive learning experiences that nurture critical lifelong skills. For students, this translates into the ability to evaluate information critically in an increasingly complex world. For educators, our platform provides comprehensive tools that reduce instructional burdens and empower more individualized, effective teaching.

To measure social impact, we will track user adoption metrics, retention rates, and the extent of integration into formal CT training programs. We also plan to build a vibrant research and teaching community where educators and scholars collaborate to refine CT methodologies. Regular user feedback and emotional engagement analyses will guide continuous improvements, ensuring responsiveness to evolving educational needs.

By fostering an inclusive educational environment and offering scalable, adaptive CT education solutions, our project bridges existing gaps and evolves with the communities it serves. Ultimately, it contributes to building a more equitable, thoughtful, and critically engaged society.

Personal Information Collection Statement (PICS):
1. The personal data collected in this form will be used for activity-organizing, record keeping and reporting only. The collected personal data will be purged within 6 years after the event.
2. Please note that it is obligatory to provide the personal data required.
3. Your personal data collected will be kept by the LTTC and will not be transferred to outside parties.
4. You have the right to request access to and correction of information held by us about you. If you wish to access or correct your personal data, please contact our staff at lttc@eduhk.hk.
5. The University’s Privacy Policy Statement can be access at https://www.eduhk.hk/en/privacy-policy.

• I have read and agree to the competition rules and privacy policy.