At the University of Florida College of Dentistry, artificial intelligence isn’t doing the thinking for students — it’s helping them think smarter.
Through her role within the UFCD Office of Academic Affairs, Instructional Designer III Carrie Wells, Ed.D., is working with faculty to turn AI into a learning partner. To help students prepare for the rapidly shifting world of dentistry, she is asking: How do we harness AI’s game-changing capabilities to elevate students’ practical skills without undermining critical thinking?
For a college that is training future health care providers, getting this right isn’t just academic; it’s about patient care.
Incorporating AI, transforming coursework
This shift is part of UF’s “AI Across the Curriculum” ethos, which is designed to ensure that every undergraduate develops AI competency — a workforce advantage the College of Dentistry’s academic programs are eager to leverage. Through a $70 million NVIDIA partnership, UF positioned itself as “the nation’s first AI university,” powered by the leading-edge HiPerGator supercomputer.
Already, the College of Dentistry’s partnership with Overjet exemplifies AI-centric success in its clinical applications. The Food and Drug Administration-cleared technology detects cavities and quantifies bone measurements on X-rays, transforming grayscale radiographs with color-coded annotations. This allows dental students to move beyond pattern recognition to focus on diagnostic reasoning, treatment planning and patient communication.
It’s clear, through clinical research initiatives like this, that AI’s ability to make highly difficult tasks simpler can result in more efficient dental training and better outcomes for patients.
However, within a large portion of the Doctor of Dental Medicine, or DMD, curriculum, using AI to make coursework simpler isn’t the objective. In fact, Wells is working directly with course directors to achieve just the opposite.
“AI can play many roles,” Wells told faculty in one of several recent AI workshops she co-hosted with College of Dentistry Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Joseph Riley, Ph.D.
Wells explained AI’s various academic use cases as a tutor asking students questions, a designer helping with visual concepts, a planner for course structure, an editor for communication and an interviewer for reflection exercises.
“But my favorite is just a brainstorming tool,” Wells said.
An integrative approach to teaching and learning
Wells’ first question to faculty seeking aid with strategic AI integration is: “How are you currently engaging your students?”
She challenges course directors to meet students where they are, recognizing that today’s learners may need different approaches than previous generations. This progressive pedagogical perspective guides Wells’ one-on-one work with College of Dentistry faculty who want to enhance their instruction and classroom experience using AI. The transformation they develop will reshape both content delivery and student engagement.
“Certain courses will be re-envisioned to incorporate more AI,” Wells said. “The course director will use it to develop the activities, and students will use it to complete the activities with support from the instructional design team.”
Leaning into the value of extended critical thinking, Wells encourages the use of AI as an intellectual sparring partner. She tells faculty to have students debate relevant course topics while their large-language-model opponent counters with opposing perspectives, forcing deeper engagement with evidence.
“AI can be a great debate partner,” Wells said. “I actually encourage debating the side you don’t support.”
AI as a collaborator
Wells’ innovative approach to treating AI as a collaborator recently proved effective when she was working alongside faculty to address a newfound concern in a fourth-year DMD Professionalism in Patient Care course. Some students were treating their final ethical dilemma paper as merely “an assignment to complete as a graduation requirement,” she said.
The original assignment asked students to write a paper reflecting on clinical encounters they had experienced as student-practitioners through the lens of guiding ethical principles, but this left room for superficial responses.
Now, an AI interviewer guides students through deeper exploration of their clinical anecdotes, asking targeted questions about decision making and values before students begin writing. Without writing the essay for them, AI elicits more meaningful self-assessments.
“We needed evidence of a deeper exploration of the students’ ethical dilemmas in clinics, and the AI interview was the opportunity to demonstrate this,” Wells said.
What had been a perfunctory exercise was strategically transformed into genuine self-examination, demonstrating how AI can enhance rather than replace critical thinking.
For Wells, this represents the ideal: AI as an intellectual catalyst rather than an academic shortcut, helping students reach deeper questions without providing the answers.
It’s an approach that may well define the future of professional education: harnessing revolutionary technology to strengthen intellectual rigor, and preparing practitioners who are both technically proficient and thoughtfully equipped for patient care.