Process over Product: The AI Tool being Developed within CHHS to Support Critical Thinking
ThinkMate Edu, or simply “ThinkMate” in this article, will be a new faculty guided, AI-supported learning environment for critical thinking, which is being developed in-house within the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS) at CSULB. ThinkMate will be piloted this academic year across undergraduate and graduate courses in the Departments of Health Care Management and Kinesiology. It will use ChatGPT Edu to configure custom responses for critical thinking-focused assignments and deliverables for students. This learning model aligns with the CSU vision of helping students learn with and through AI, developing the ability to reason alongside intelligent tools rather than relying on them for shortcut answers. The rise of ThinkMate Edu is thanks, in part, to funding awarded to Dr. Sara Nourazari from the CSU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Educational Innovations Challenge. CHHS sat down with Dr. Nourazari, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Care Management (HCM) and Principal Investigator (PI) on the project, to learn about this new, exciting endeavor for our college.
CHHS: Congrats on being selected as one of the winners of the CSU AI Educational Innovations Challenge! Tell us more about the project.
Dr. Sara Nourazari: It’s exciting, definitely. The fundamental thought behind this project was how to incorporate AI in teaching and in our curriculum, while doing it ethically and sustainably. ThinkMate puts the faculty at the core of what we as professors are best at doing – teaching! With ThinkMate, we are telling the AI what to do based on the course context and framework. The idea is creating an environment that will support critical thinking because one of the greatest risks with using AI, especially in higher education, is bypassing that deep level of learning that is often missed when relying on answers that Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini provide.
CHHS: How does ThinkMate work?
Dr. Sara Nourazari: Unlike generic AI tutors or course bots, ThinkMate will operate within faculty-configured assignment-specific contexts. It will act as a critical layer between generic AI tools and learners, addressing concerns that unstructured AI use could circumvent critical thinking. Faculty will be the primary architect of the ThinkMate experience for their courses. They will configure flawed outputs and ethically complex scenarios, create discipline-specific prompts, and design the scaffolds through which our students build critical reasoning. The platform itself will be developed within ChatGPT because it is available to us through ChatGPT Edu (the CSU-wide contract with Open AI). Each ThinkMate environment will be customized for the course and assignment, and students will be provided a link on Canvas to access it. In this way, ThinkMate will serve as a guardrail: instead of bypassing critical thinking with shortcut answers, students will be guided back into deeper and more meaningful engagement.
CHHS: Tell us more about what inspired you to come up with this proposal and the special collaborations it is producing within the College of Health of Human Services?
Dr. Sara Nourazari: In the spring semester last year there was a discussion in my department about what we wanted our vision to be for the next academic year. My thoughts were to incorporate AI into our curriculum within the department. A couple of weeks after that discussion, the request for proposal (RFP) came out from the CSU Chancellor’s Office and it was just perfect timing. With the strong support of Interim Dean Dr. Grace Reynolds-Fisher, I began developing an idea that could scale beyond my department, applicable to any field, program, or course. A key goal of ThinkMate Edu is to help faculty build the skills and confidence to integrate AI into their courses independently.
Bringing AI into higher education can understandably feel intimidating, and while some colleagues weren’t ready to engage when I reached out, a few responded with such strong support that it gave momentum to the proposal I submitted to the Chancellor’s Office. Since the awards were announced, the support from the Provost, CSULB leadership, faculty, and the wider campus community has been incredible, creating opportunities for ThinkMate Edu to extend beyond the two initially targeted departments.
The initiative will be led by a core cross-disciplinary team, including Dr. Joshua Cotter (Co-PI), Professor of Kinesiology (KIN), who will guide the adaptation of ThinkMate Edu in large lecture and lab-based courses to strengthen scalability across instructional formats. Students will play a critical role in the design and development process, contributing to scenario creation, usability testing, and feedback collection to help ensure the platform remains user-centered, relevant, and inclusive. Academic Technology Services (ATS), led by Dr. Dave Scozzaro, will assist in developing faculty onboarding resources, including a video series to support scalable adoption. Instructional Design Services, meanwhile, will provide expertise in accessibility and overall course quality. And to support long-term scalability, the CHHS IT Team will assist with formatting and hosting instructional content during the project period and prepare them for CSU Commons or an equivalent open-access repository.
CHHS: Among all the activities faculty engage in, why was it important for you and your team to focus on this new initiative with implementing AI into the classroom and among hundreds of submissions, why do you think this project was selected to move forward through The CSU?
Dr. Sara Nourazari: Working on this proposal highlighted an important point for us as faculty: while it’s essential to stay current in our own fields, it’s equally important to stay up-to-date with developments across the broader higher education landscape. When the world moves fast, rigidity becomes more of a liability. For educators, that means leaning into learning agility; being willing to adapt, try new tools, and translate them into meaningful opportunities for students. It’s also important that our college and campus leadership stay engaged, so that when opportunities like the CSU’s AI Educational Innovations Challenge come along, we’re ready to bring great ideas to life.
