Open Educational Resources
Document Type
Assignment
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Courses that require the execution of project planning for students spanning the semester often require the instructor to teach students to engage with the “devil’s advocate” as a means of challenging cognitive bias and avoiding groupthink, especially since the tendency to fall into groupthink results in poor outcomes and decisions that are made too quickly in favor of keeping the peace. Sometimes, challenging cognitive bias requires assigning other students the role of critical thinker of a proposed plan, allowing for review and feedback in dyadic settings. Other times, such as group or team situations, this method is carried out as a portion of the planning stages of the project assigned by the professor. Many times, the professor is placed in the role of offering critical feedback or suggestions along the lines of “what if X occurs, what is the backup plan?” This AI artifact can give professors a chance to guide students through the process of autonomy in the long-term planning and execution of a guided project (e.g., group or teamwork at the undergraduate level or thesis and capstone students at the graduate program), particularly because generative AI, like ChatGPT can give openings to challenge biases if asked to do so. In other words, students can be coached to think of ChatGPT as a potential well-meaning critic of their work, who might just open their eyes to flaws that can be addressed in advance.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
CUNY OER Funding
CUNY OER Initiative
Comments
This OER was funded in part by the CUNY OER Initiative.