Projects
Robust and Improved Thoughtful AI 2025-2026
Students: Alina Sainju, Hannah Yoo, Kyle Houston, Monica Zhang | Advisor: Kenneth C. Arnold
Status: In Progress | Academic Year: 2025-2026
Building upon the foundation established by the AI for Writers 2024-2025 project, our core objective for this academic year is to enhance the robustness, usability, and integration capabilities of the Thoughtful AI system for the Calvin University community as well as external research collaborators.
Textfocals: AI-Generated Views for Writing Support
Team: Jiho Kim, Ray C. Flanagan, Noelle E. Haviland, ZeAi Sun, Souad N. Yakubu, Edom A. Maru, Kenneth C. Arnold
Status: Published at HAI-GEN Workshop 2024
Textfocals is a UI prototype that provides LLM-generated summaries, questions, and advice in a sidebar of a text editor, encouraging reflection and self-driven revision in writing without direct text generation. This approach maintains full authorship while leveraging AI to support the writing process.
AI for Writers 2024-2025
Students: Jason Chew, Daniel Kim | Advisor: Kenneth C. Arnold
Completed: May 8, 2025
A Microsoft Word add-in that generates next-sentence suggestions at varying levels of semantic completeness to enhance the writing process. The tool offers four types of suggestions: thought completion, questions, vocabulary, and rhetorical strategies. Published to the Microsoft Store and tested with 9 participants who found the single-sentence scale contributed to more natural, recursive writing workflows.
Promoting End-to-End Intentionality with LLMs
Team: Jason Chew, Daniel Kim, Jiho Kim, Ray Flanagan | Lead: Kenneth C. Arnold
Status: Ongoing Research
Research investigating how large language models can be designed to promote intentional, goal-directed thinking and support sustained cognitive effort in complex problem-solving scenarios.