Higher education increasingly leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to foster higher-order cognitive skills; however, in Indonesia, students of Islamic Religious Education (PAI) often depend on rote memorization, limiting the growth of critical thinking and moral reasoning. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of a ChatGPT-based PAI learning model in enhancing students’ dual thinking abilities. A mixed-methods quasi-experimental design was implemented with 32 undergraduate students assigned equally to experimental and control groups; instruments comprised a critical thinking test, a moral reasoning test contextualized with Islamic dilemmas, and a transcript analysis guide, all expert-validated. Quantitative results showed notable post-test gains in the experimental group for critical thinking (M = 78.6, SD = 7.8) and moral reasoning (M = 76.8, SD = 7.9), while qualitative analysis indicated that 56.3% of students reached advanced critical thinking levels and 68.8% demonstrated advanced moral reasoning. The findings indicate that integrating ChatGPT enhances both cognitive and affective learning outcomes in PAI. The study concludes that a ChatGPT-based model is effective for strengthening critical thinking and moral reasoning, and contributes empirical evidence on generative AI in Islamic education; practically, it underscores ChatGPT’s utility as a dialogic partner when guided by lecturers. The implications include scaling to larger samples and longer interventions and exploring adaptive prompting strategies across diverse educational contexts.
Salim et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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