This presentation will describe and assess a classroom experiment conducted in the Fall semester of 2025, in which students in a course on literary criticism and theory engaged in a series of textual Socratic dialogues. Some of these dialogues were “all human” and involved two peers as the Socratic figure and the interlocutor. However, more than half of the dialogues featured an AI large language model (LLM) as the Socratic figure. This experiment was an attempt to employ AI constructively in the classroom with an exercise that would hone the students’ understanding of and engagement with the assigned theoretical readings. We also aimed to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the two formats, all-human vs. AI/human.

Presenters

• John Halbrooks jvhalbrooks@southalabama.edu, University of South Alabama
• Ryan Harville jrh2424@jagmail.southalabama.edu, University of South Alabama
• Abigail Ward agw2421@jagmail.southalabama.edu, University of South Alabama