SAIL — Socratic AI Learning Framework
Creating dialogue that helps students examine and revise their reasoning.
Focus: Generative AI · Formative feedback · Computer science education
The learning need
One instructor cannot speak with every student at every moment. I am interested in how technology can create additional opportunities for students to explain their ideas, receive feedback, and reconsider assumptions.
What I developed
I developed SAIL (Socratic AI Learning Framework), a website that provides students with a purpose-built large language model tutor. In a typical activity, students first formulate their own solution and then use the tutor to test their reasoning.
The tutor is prompted to challenge assumptions, pose follow-up questions, and help students identify gaps. The activity keeps the student’s own attempt at the center of the conversation.
The design choice
A useful learning dialogue does more than deliver a result. It asks the learner to make their reasoning explicit and decide whether an explanation holds up. Students examine and verify the tutor’s responses as part of that process.
The goal is to create more opportunities for individualized feedback and revision while preserving the intellectual work of students and the judgment of the instructor.
Connection to my teaching
This approach extends the same principle I use in peer instruction: commit to an idea, explain it, encounter a question, and revise. The tutor is one part of that learning environment.