Project Profile Using AI to Enhance Reading Competence

The project aims to develop and implement, in a participatory way, a reading course in sociological theory. In this course, students use an AI chatbot to build competencies in engaging with texts, summarizing them, and revising them.

The project is based on a clear assumption: interaction with a language model (AI chatbot) can facilitate the engagement with complex texts, especially theoretical ones, and can support the development of reading competence. However, generative AI is not intended to replace the act of reading itself. Instead, it is used as a didactic tool that helps students develop reading skills and deepen their understanding of texts.

This concept can be transferred beyond sociology to any seminar-based course in which students are required to read, summarize, and engage with texts. It is particularly relevant for related fields in the social sciences, but also for all disciplines in the humanities, cultural studies, and language studies.