Using AI Without Losing Thinking: A Guide to Structured Inquiry, Visible Reasoning, & Prompt Engineering A Pedagogical Philosophy of AI-Mediated Reasoning

Version 1.2 substantially expands and refines the guide as a public-facing instructor resource. This version strengthens the author note, expertise statement, scope statement, acknowledgements, and writing-style statement; clarifies the relationship between the guide’s independently developed classroom framework and named prompting methods from existing AI research; and more explicitly frames the guide as a practice-based model grounded in assignment design, classroom observation, and iterative implementation.

The main guide has been revised to sharpen the distinction between AI-generated output and visible student reasoning, clarify the Levels of Engagement, strengthen the role of the Core Reference Extract (CRE), and better connect assignment design, AI interaction, failure diagnosis, and instructor evaluation. Version 1.2 also expands the appendices as a practical reference system, including assignment models, evaluation guidance, student-facing explanations, course-level kernels, persistent constraints, Inquiry Continuity Summaries, inquiry-diagnosis methods, and prompting architectures. Additional attention is given to ethical responsibility, AI detection risks, privacy, power, and the need to evaluate what students do with AI rather than what AI produces.

This version also includes a two-page instructor brief designed for conference distribution and quick classroom adoption. The brief summarizes the core method, Levels of Engagement, Core Reference Extract, assignment conversion process, and practical grading questions, and links readers to the full instructor guide and mobile student-facing guide.