Better answers, broader thinking: What students gain from ChatGPT and critical-thinking training

A randomized experiment with over 1,000 first-year undergraduate students tested whether access to an AI tool and critical-thinking training improved their work on a real business assignment. The study found that AI access helped students produce more polished, professional-quality answers with clearer logic and more ideas, while critical-thinking training in causal reasoning led students to generate more original and diverse ideas without improving traditional grading scores. Together, both approaches complemented each other, with students receiving both showing gains across the widest range of measures. The results highlight a challenge for schools: as AI makes it easier for students to produce expert-like work, traditional assignment rubrics may need to evolve to better measure originality and reasoning rather than just polished final answers.