#507 – Enhancing the Socratic Seminar With AI

#507 — Enhancing the Socratic Seminar With AI

AVID Open Access
15 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:00 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:06 Check it out, check it out, check it out, check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is enhancing the Socratic seminar with AI. The Socratic seminar brings together many of the skills AVID seeks to build in students: critical reading, inquiry, academic dialogue, collaboration, listening, and reflection. At its core, the strategy asks students to engage deeply with a shared text, prepare thoughtful questions, listen carefully to one another, and build meaning through dialogue rather than debate.

A key element of this experience is that students are not simply recalling information or waiting for the teacher to confirm the right answer. They’re learning how to examine ideas, support their thinking with evidence, clarify their reasoning, and consider multiple perspectives. Students are learning that rigorous thinking is not just about defending their own opinion, but about allowing their thinking to be shaped, tested, and strengthened through interaction with others.

In a world where answers and opinions are readily available through web searches or AI queries, these skills are more important than ever before, and the Socratic seminar remains a powerful way to help students develop them. With that in mind, it’s important that technology and AI do not replace student thinking and ownership in this powerful learning experience. Still, we should be asking ourselves: Does AI have a productive place in the Socratic seminar? Can it be used in a way that levels up the experience? To explore these questions, let’s break down the process into three phases: before, during, and after the actual seminar.

Paul Beckermann 1:52 In the “before” phase, students are preparing for the seminar. They read or review the resource to be discussed. The first time through, they look for big impressions; on subsequent reviews, they dig more deeply into the key points, identifying major ideas and key pieces of evidence from the text. They can call out key vocabulary and record initial questions about the content.

Once they have a strong foundational understanding of the resources, they generate questions, including opening, open-ended questions steeped firmly in the text; core questions, which develop the main theme and lead to further inquiry; and closing questions that connect the abstract to the concrete. There are a few beneficial ways a student might use AI during this phase without shortcutting their own critical thinking process.

The first is as a comprehension assistant. AI can be helpful in explaining confusing concepts, historical context, and unfamiliar vocabulary. You would not want your students to simply upload a copy of the article into AI and then ask it to do all the analysis. However, if the students do the initial review and planning, AI can serve as a helpful coach or assistant to clear up confusing aspects of that initial review. For instance, a student might use a prompt like this: “Explain these vocabulary words from the text in student-friendly language. Do not summarize the article or tell me what to think about it”.

A second AI use could be to strengthen student-generated questions. Once again, this means the students do the work first. They review the source document and generate multi-leveled questions. Once they’ve completed that original thinking on their own, they can then seek feedback from AI. A prompt for this purpose might sound like this: “Review my Socratic seminar questions. Tell me which ones are most open-ended and which might benefit from rewording. Organize my questions into Costa’s three levels of thinking, and point out any gaps. Also, point out which questions need stronger connection to the text. Do not answer the questions for me or write new questions. Prompt me to improve my work”.

A third AI-powered strategy is to allow students to practice the Socratic seminar process with AI before engaging with their classmates. This could be done a couple of different ways. One approach would be to use AI to facilitate a practice seminar discussion using a different topic than the one to be used in class. The other would be to practice using the same topic that students will use when they engage face-to-face. You will need to determine if you want students to have a more general practice experience so they can get used to asking good questions and supporting their responses, or if you want them to prepare specifically for the upcoming seminar. Both can have value.

If students are practicing for an upcoming topic, they’ll probably need to upload the source content and their preparation materials to the AI. With that context in place, they can prompt the AI with specific practice requests. Here’s an example: “I’m preparing for a Socratic seminar. I’ve uploaded the source text and my preparation notes. Act as a practice partner, not as someone giving me answers. My focus today is asking follow-up questions and building on another person’s idea. Start by asking me one open-ended question connected to the text. After I respond, pretend you are a classmate and make a brief comment that gives me something to build on. Then prompt me to ask a follow-up question or extend the idea. Do not answer the seminar questions for me. Instead, coach me to ask clearer follow-up questions, connect my response to the text, invite another perspective, and keep the conversation going. After eight exchanges, give me feedback on how well I asked questions and built on ideas”.

Here’s another example to help students practice paraphrasing and respectful disagreement: “I’m preparing for a Socratic seminar. I have uploaded the source text, my notes, and my seminar questions. Act as a student practice partner. My focus is paraphrasing before responding and disagreeing respectfully. Ask me a question about the text. After I respond, give a short, classmate-style response that either partially agrees or respectfully disagrees with me. Before I respond back, require me to paraphrase your point first by saying something like, ‘What I hear you saying is…’ Then have me respond using respectful academic language. If my response sounds too much like a debate or argument, coach me to revise it so it sounds more like dialogue. Do not tell me what position to take. Help me practice listening, paraphrasing, and responding thoughtfully”.

If you want students to experience more general practice and not something directly related to an in-class topic, you might use a prompt like this one: “I’m preparing for a Socratic seminar. Act as a practice partner, not as a teacher giving me answers. Your job is to help me practice through dialogue. Here is the text or topic we are discussing: [Paste text, excerpt, summary, or title]. Here are my notes and questions: [Paste student notes and questions]. Please run a short practice Socratic seminar with me. Follow these rules: 1) Ask me one open-ended question at a time. 2) Do not give me answers or tell me what to think. 3) After I respond, ask a follow-up question that pushes me to clarify, use evidence, consider another viewpoint, or explain my reasoning. 4) Remind me to refer back to the text when my answer is too general. 5) Occasionally model the role of a classmate by offering a different interpretation, but do not dominate the conversation. 6) Help me practice dialogue, not debate. 7) After 8 to 10 exchanges, give me feedback on my preparation. Focus on my questioning, use of evidence, listening and responding skills, and depth of thinking. Start by asking me a level-one opening question connected to the text, then move toward level-two and level-three questions”.

Since these prompts are fairly long and take some crafting, it’s probably a good idea to give the wording to the students and then have them copy and paste them into the chatbot. This increases the probability that they will have a good experience. When students are finished, you might decide to have them write a reflection about their experience and perhaps submit the AI chat string for your review.

Because it is time-consuming to review all of this, you, the teacher, could have AI summarize the key takeaways from individual students or perhaps from the class as a whole.

Paul Beckermann 8:21 During the face-to-face Socratic seminar, students gather around a shared text and engage in dialogue with one another. Students, and not the teacher, are the center of the conversation. Students bring their annotated text, preparation notes, and seminar questions. The discussion usually begins with an open-ended question.

Students respond by referring back to the text, asking follow-up questions, clarifying ideas, paraphrasing classmates, and building on or respectfully challenging one another’s thinking. The goal is not to win an argument, but to deepen shared understanding through careful listening and evidence-based conversation. Depending on the format, some students may participate in an inner circle, while others observe from an outer circle, tracking behaviors such as speaking, looking at the speaker, referring to text, asking questions, and responding to others.

During the actual seminar experience, you want to be careful that AI does not replace any student thinking. The power of the seminar, after all, is the productive struggle that comes from high-level thinking and the interactions among students. With that in mind, you might likely decide that students will not use AI at all during this part of the experience. That can make a lot of sense.

If students are allowed to use AI, perhaps it’s limited to “co-pilots” who are listening and processing this central dialogue. If you go this direction, these students could use AI in ways that are similar to how they would use it during the preparation stages, such as to help them with comprehension and clarity.

The more powerful use of AI at this phase might be in how the teacher uses it. If you have the capability to record audio for the seminar, you can have AI generate a transcript, which can then be used to identify broad patterns and analysis afterward. For instance, you might upload the transcript and then ask a prompt like: “How often did students ask questions versus giving answers or opinions? Identify moments of interruption and assess the politeness of student interactions. Where did students build on one another’s ideas? Where did the conversation shift from dialogue toward debate, and how often did students reference back to the text?”. This type of analysis can then be used by the teacher or even shared with the class for debrief and growth opportunities.

Paul Beckermann 10:38 After the face-to-face seminar, students move into debrief and reflection. First, the class reflects on the seminar experience itself: how it felt, what went well, what was challenging, whether anyone’s thinking changed, and what made the discussion effective or maybe ineffective. This helps students step back from the content and examine the quality of the dialogue.

Then, students often complete a written reflection. They identify something they contributed, an idea from someone else that stood out, the most interesting question or idea, what they observed, what should be improved on next time, and perhaps a personal area to work on for the next seminar. In short, the after-seminar phase turns the conversation into learning. Students process what was said, evaluate how the dialogue worked, and set goals for becoming stronger participants next time.

During this phase of the process, there are a few options for using AI to wrap things up. If you were able to capture the experience with the AI-generated transcript, the logical step would be to use it to debrief with the class. This can be a powerful way to examine impartial data from the seminar, and it can help students take a step back and review the experience less personally.

As a follow-up to this, teachers can take this data and use it to help plan their next steps. For instance, they might upload the data into a chatbot and then prompt: “Using these observation notes, identify three strengths in the seminar and two skills to teach before the next seminar”. If teachers want to take this a step further, they could ask the AI to help generate mini-lessons to fill in any gaps. If students struggled with asking follow-up questions, for example, AI can help the teacher create a five-minute practice activity using clarification stems or evidence probes.

As for individual student use, you’ll likely still want students to do their own personal debrief and reflection themselves before turning to any AI assistants. However, once they have done that, AI can provide review and insights that help them go deeper. For example, they could upload their own reflection and then add: “Review my Socratic seminar reflection. Tell me where I am being specific and where I need to add evidence from the discussion. Do not rewrite it for me”.

Similarly, they could prompt: “Based on my reflection, help me identify one specific goal for my next Socratic seminar. Focus on listening, questioning, text evidence, or building on others’ ideas”. To help make review of these student comments more efficient, the teacher could have students submit those reflections using an online form, and then the teacher could paste the responses into AI, requesting a summary of key takeaways, trends, strengths, and areas to continue developing.

AI is really good at summarizing, so this can work well and save lots of time. Of course, don’t put any student names or identifiable information into the AI chatbot. If you’re unsure what you can upload, check with local officials to make sure that you’re following local protocol, policy, and guidelines.

Paul Beckermann 13:40 Do you need to integrate AI into the Socratic seminar process? Absolutely not. Can it help to enhance the process? Possibly. The key is to examine your goals and areas you’d like to improve, and then ask yourself: Can AI be an effective thought partner in reaching those goals? If you’re not sure of the answer, you can even ask AI to help you think through that decision-making process as well.

Paul Beckermann 14:05 To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection “AI in the K-12 Classroom,” and of course, be sure to join us here next week for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.