One method for History, Literature, Physics, and Ethics.

History 2C, UCLA

Kai Coach began in History 2C, a UCLA course in which students interpret primary sources and build historical arguments. Students used Kai Coach in four modules across the six-week term: the weekly discussion posts, the first paper, the peer responses, and the final exam. On the exam, Kai Coach helped students build arguments, critique an answer an AI produced, and reason from inside a historical perspective. The course offers the strongest evidence so far, because it compares a coached cohort with an uncoached cohort that answered identical prompts. Citation of specific assigned readings on the final exam rose from 7 percent to 87 percent.

Physics, UCLA

A physics problem is not a straight line, and each student can reach the solution by a path of their own. The goal of Kai Coach is not simply a correct answer but a student who can find their own way through the problem. It asks students to reconcile the reasoning they gave in words with the equation they wrote. The Physics version works in three layers: reflection after an exam, calibration before the next exam, and weekly probes of problem-solving reasoning. The first pilot runs in Physics 1B at UCLA with AIMS in Fall 2026, where answers come with a marking key, so reasoning and accuracy can be measured together. Distinguished Professor Alexander Kusenko leads this work, and in Spring 2027 he will split-test Kai Coach across two large Physics 2B lectures with the support of an NSF grant in physics education.

Comparative Literature 2BW, UCLA

In Winter 2027, Professor Zrinka Stahuljak will bring Kai Coach to Comparative Literature 2BW in the Humanities division at UCLA. The course combines analytical and critical thinking with writing, and it satisfies the University's writing requirement. In this setting, Kai Coach treats interpretation as a form of reasoning: students must make a claim about a text and defend it with evidence from the text itself. The pilot extends Kai Coach beyond History and the Social Sciences into the Humanities. A study under a UCLA IRB protocol will compare the coached cohort with the course's 2025 offering.

Business Ethics

The Business Ethics module draws on the textbook Commercial Society. It coaches one argument about price controls through to the ethical judgment it forces: who goes without when a scarce good is rationed by queue instead of by price. The module moves through three phases: Mechanics, The Twist, and Judgment. Because ethical questions invite advocacy, Kai Coach stays evenhanded and never delivers its own verdict. Students reach their own judgment and defend it with the reasoning the textbook provides.

The method travels to any course that asks students to think.

Critical thinking does not belong to one field, and neither does Kai Coach. Every module starts from a course's own prompts and readings, together with a conversation about where previous students have stalled and, where available, samples of their writing. Kudu builds the module on the readings the course already assigns. The instructor then spends about one to two hours reviewing the module and releasing it to students.