Philosopher Simon Cullen (Carnegie-Mellon) writes:
I'm writing to share a project that I expect to be of considerable interest to your readers! With my CMU postdoc and colleague, Nicholas DiBella, I've built an AI-scaffolded group chat platform to host student discussions on polarizing topics.
The platform is called Sway and it grows out of my viral CMU class, "Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society," which was recently covered by Inside Higher Ed. The class showed how students flourish in an environment where they can openly explore controversial topics, test out their beliefs, and engage in constructive disagreement—all without fear of backlash. I've collected student feedback on my website.
Sway is our attempt to translate the benefits of my class to a much broader audience—and to learn a thing or two about AI discussion facilitation in the process!
The main thing Nick and I would like to share with readers is this short video demonstrating the platform in action with a simulated discussion between two students on the topic of Israel-Palestine.
To be clear: we're not selling anything, but we are trying to share our research and get more educators involved. We have faculty at around 20 institutions teaching over 1,000 students using Sway this Fall, and thanks to a recent donation from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, we can now support a lot more.
There are many ways to incorporate AI-facilitated discussion into a class, but the most popular so far is to create "discussion assignments". This is really simple: the instructor provides one or more topic statements they’d like students to discuss and the platform takes care of the rest (eliciting student opinions, forming groups, verifying completion, measuring comprehension, etc.).
Our long-term aim is to empower millions of students to cultivate intellectual humility, cognitive empathy, critical thinking, and constructive disagreement skills—so Nick and I would love to share this with your audience. Instructors interested in using Sway in their classes can register on our website. We’d also love to hear from administrators who are interested in promoting constructive disagreement on campus more broadly!
Professor Cullen is eager to hear from readers, so I've opened comments here for feedback and discussion of the project.
