This past spring semester, I taught (with Nicole Oster and Lindsey McCaleb) a masters/doctoral seminar on Human Creativity × AI in Education. When we set out to design the class, we knew we were venturing into relatively uncharted territory, committed to examining creativity through a transdisciplinary lens and exploring how GenAI could work as a creative collaborator. The class was a great success, that I described in this blog post: Reflecting on a Semester of Discovery, Creativity and GenAI.

I thought the semester was done but then I recently learned that one of the student projects had continued, and had even expanded.

I’m thrilled to spotlight one such project: Karina Luna’s “Media Mentor AI”—an innovative chatbot that guides users through critical analysis of news headlines using the SCAMPER framework. Rather than replacing critical thinking, her tool functions as a collaborative thinking partner—exactly the kind of thoughtful AI implementation we hoped our students would develop. By merging creative thinking strategies with media literacy concepts, Karina created something that embodied exactly what our course aimed to inspire.

As she said in an interview with ASU media at the end of the semester:

My bot combines a critical and creative thinking strategy more commonly used in STEM education. I’ve seen it used for design thinking, and it combines that thinking strategy with media literacy. It guides users through critical analysis of textual media, and it addresses concepts like persuasion, bias, neutrality, sensationalism, fact checking, framing and misinformation.

The most validating part is seeing how Karina continued developing her project after the semester ended. Working with faculty at the Cronkite School of Journalism, she conducted a pilot test with undergraduate students that showed impressive results: expanded perspectives, improved self-efficacy, and deeper understanding of media framing. And she has a journal article about this work in press! How cool is that.

As educators, we live for those moments when a student’s project transcends the classroom and makes an impact in the real world. I couldn’t be prouder of Karina’s work. Her journey reminds me why I teach: to witness that magical moment when a student takes an idea and transforms it into something with genuine real-world impact.

Below is Karina’s own reflection on her journey with Media Mentor AI:

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Karina Luna’s Reflection:

I took the last opening in the Spring 2025 class on Human Creativity and AI for Education. The transdisciplinary approach was truly innovative, and I was intrigued – but also intimidated by the challenge. The first couple of weeks felt status quo, our class of twenty was catching on to the weekly rotating assignments. So, in the third week, we were challenged to push beyond our comfort zones, to bring our entire selves to the ideation of our AI projects. The message was loud but encouraging, “THINK BIGGER!”

This challenge deeply motivated me and became my inflection point. Up until then, I had prototyped ideas tied to familiar territory: my experiences as an immigrant from Mexico and as a former Human Resources manager. Yet I hadn’t explored themes connected to my current stage as a PhD student of mass communication.

The next day, I began ideating with ChatGPT to explore connections across disciplines and pedagogical approaches, eventually tying them with media literacy. The process deepened when I brought in my husband’s foggy memories of “some cool critical thinking classes” he took in fourth grade in the 1980s. Curious, I typed the limited details I had about his memories into ChatGPT and discovered those classes had been designed for gifted children’s education. I asked ChatGPT for more context, further explanations, and other frameworks and disciplines, all while combining each with ideas related to media literacy. I was hooked!

The class environment shifted my thinking and led me to create Media Mentor AI. Media Mentor AI is an interactive AI chatbot designed to guide users in a structured, critical analysis of news headlines. It leverages SCAMPER, a scientific method for creative and critical thinking, where each letter represents a strategy for reimagining ideas: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to Another Use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Merging this framework with media literacy concepts gave the project its unique character.

By the end of the semester, I had tested Media Mentor AI countless times on my own, as well as testing done by classmates and a few professors from the Cronkite School of journalism that I attend. In late April, and with the support of my faculty mentor at Cronkite, we conducted a pilot test with senior undergraduate students.

Findings showed that the interactive nature of the AI tool fundamentally reshaped the student learning experience, in that it expanded students’ perspectives, improved their self-efficacy, improved their knowledge, and provided new insights about media framing. Students reported deeper thinking and understanding of media bias and audience effects, contradicting concerns that AI hinders the critical thinking process.

Rather than offering users the “correct” answer or replacing human judgment, Media Mentor AI functions as a collaborative thinking partner, encouraging users to interrogate not only the content of media but also its impact on diverse audiences. Through this multi-perspective process, learners examine how language shapes perception, how framing influences public discourse, and how alternative viewpoints can reveal hidden bias, persuasion, or misinformation.