Claude’s Ode to the Socratic Seminar

Many of us can probably recall our first ah-ha moment with AI–when we realized we could no longer view this as some ruinous technology in our field of education. Instead, we realized, despite our concerns (which are real concerns), there are some powerful learning opportunities to be had with artificial intelligence.

For me, that moment came when trying out Quizlet’s Q-Chat. It was the first time I experienced an AI chatbot that went beyond encouraging users to learn the material in its regurgitated flashcard format. Instead, Q-Chat got users to think more critically about that content, including broader concepts and making real-world connections. It offered constructive feedback for users’ responses. If a user was struggling with these higher order thinking questions, Q-Chat would offer follow up questions to try and guide the user back toward the right train of thought.

I was blown away. It was reassurance to me that there was more to AI than simply giving users sufficient answers. It turned the tables. Here, it was demonstrating impressive questioning techniques and offering constructive feedback for student answers. It was honoring the longstanding truth that the best teaching and learning experiences stem more from the questions we ask rather than the answers we are given. It’s why the Socratic Seminar is in every teacher’s toolbox of effective learning strategies.

Unfortunately, Quizlet is ending its Q-Chat feature for reasons not explicitly stated by the developer. Nevertheless, the article in today’s episode brings new hope in the belief that AI developers understand the value in this dynamic relationship between questions and answers, and how crucial this is in achieving more authentic learning experiences between students, teachers, and AI tools.

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Talking the Read

Episode 2: “AI’s Role in the Education Revolution”

Show Notes

Today’s episode is based on an article published in Venture Beat: “Anthropic flips the script on AI in education: Claude’s Learning Mode makes students do the thinking” (2 April 2025)

Two things I learned while making this episode in ElevenLabs

• Sometimes you have to misspell your own name for the chatbot to pronounce it correctly.
• Some of the inflection of words felt off. A carefully added comma (defying grammar) or replacing a question mark with a period (sorry, punctuation gods) can help achieve the desired inflection in the recorded product.

To learn more about the production process of this AI-generated podcast, check out the show notes for the first episode.