From Passive to Active: Teaching Students to Critically Engage with AI Feedback

Oct. 7, 2025

Many educators worry that AI feedback will make students passive consumers of suggestions rather than active thinkers and writers. But when students learn to critically engage with AI feedback—questioning it, pushing back, and using it to clarify their priorities—they develop skills for navigating AI in all areas of life. This approach preserves crucial space for human thinking, writing, and feedback while building the kind of skeptical AI literacy students need in an AI-saturated world.

Rather than replacing teacher and peer feedback, AI feedback can complement human interaction and help students become more intentional about their writing choices. Students who learn to interrogate AI suggestions develop confidence in their own voice and a habit of using AI to stimulate not replace their thinking.

Key topics covered:

  • The Peer & AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR) feedback prompt: A prompt designed by a team of educators around core writing pedagogy principles. It points out ways human readers may respond to the draft as it describes strengths and revision opportunities.

  • Scaffolding critical engagement: Seven practical strategies for teaching students to iterate with AI feedback—from pushing back to exploring uncertainties to asking for contradictory perspectives. 

  • Protecting human connection: Why teacher and peer feedback remain essential for meaningful writing as human communication, and how AI feedback can supplement rather than replacing these interactions

  • Hands-on practice: Working with examples of AI feedback to test out iteration strategies and evaluate the feedback prompt 

Participants will gain:

  • Strategies and adaptable materials for teaching students to question and improve AI feedback rather than accepting it passively

  • Familiarity with the research-based PAIRR prompt and PAIRR reflection questions that guide students to compare AI feedback to peer feedback

  • Ideas about how you might incorporate AI feedback to support your pedagogical approach.

Can’t make the time? A recording + resources will be emailed to all registrants.

  • Amanda Bickerstaff

    Amanda is the Founder and CEO of AI for Education. A former high school science teacher and EdTech executive with over 20 years of experience in the education sector, she has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that AI can offer. She is a frequent consultant, speaker, and writer on the topic of AI in education, leading workshops and professional learning across both K12 and Higher Ed. Amanda is committed to helping schools and teachers maximize their potential through the ethical and equitable adoption of AI.

    Anna Mills

    Anna Mills has taught writing in California community colleges for 20 years. She is the author of two open educational resource textbooks: AI and College Writing: An Orientation and How Arguments Work: A Guide to Writing and Analyzing Texts in College. Her writing on AI appears in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Computers and Composition, AIPedagogy.org, and TextGenEd: Continuing Experiments. She serves on the Modern Language Association Task Force on Writing and AI. As a volunteer advisor, she has helped shape the pedagogical approach of MyEssayFeedback.ai, and she currently serves as co-Principal Investigator on the Peer and AI Review & Reflection project funded by the California Education Learning Lab.