Thinking-With-AI Workshop
You have studied the ideas. Now you will practice them. This lesson is a workshop — an active, hands-on session where you apply every skill from this module to a real challenge. You will think first, prompt deliberately, evaluate critically, stay in the driver's seat of your own reasoning, and reflect honestly on the experience. By the end, you will have a concrete example of what it looks and feels like to think well alongside AI.
The Workshop Challenge
Your challenge: Investigate a real question about AI in society, form your own informed position, and produce a short, well-reasoned argument — using AI as a thinking partner, not a ghostwriter. The question is: Should AI be allowed to make final decisions in school discipline cases — for example, deciding whether a student cheated or broke a rule? This question touches ethics, fairness, human judgment, and technology. There is no single correct answer — but there are well-reasoned and poorly-reasoned positions, and your job is to produce a well-reasoned one.
A great thinking-with-AI question has no obvious single answer, connects to real values and tradeoffs, requires understanding context and consequences, and is something where AI can give useful raw material but cannot supply your personal position. This question has all four qualities.
Phase 1: Think First
Before opening any AI tool, spend time with the question on your own. What do you already know or believe about this topic? What makes it complicated? What values are at stake? What would the strongest argument on each side look like? The goal is not to have a perfect answer — it is to engage your own mind before AI enters the picture. Your initial thinking becomes the foundation you will build on and the comparison point you will use to evaluate AI output.
Phase 2: Prompt Carefully
Now design your AI prompts deliberately. Do not just type the question and accept whatever comes. Instead, write at least two different prompts: One prompt asking AI to lay out the strongest arguments in favor of allowing AI to make discipline decisions. One prompt asking AI to lay out the strongest arguments against it. For each prompt, apply the five elements you learned: specify the context, goal, constraints, format, and evaluation criteria. Ask AI to acknowledge uncertainty and name the strongest counterarguments.
Phase 3: Evaluate Critically
Read each AI response and audit it using the four evaluation questions: Is it accurate? Is it complete? Is it biased? Is it appropriate for your purpose? Mark specific passages you agree with, disagree with, or find incomplete. Look for things that seem too neat or that miss important complexity. Use your own thinking from Phase 1 as a reference point — where does the AI diverge from your initial reasoning, and who has the stronger case?
When you evaluate AI output, your own prior reasoning is not just a starting point — it is the standard against which you measure the AI. This is why Phase 1 matters. Without your own thinking as a reference, you have nothing to push back against.
Full Thinking-With-AI Workshop
- Complete all five phases of this workshop and write your responses for each.
- PHASE 1 — THINK FIRST (10 minutes, no AI)
- Write your initial thinking on this question: Should AI make final decisions in school discipline cases?
- - What do you already know or believe?
- - What makes this question difficult?
- - What are two arguments in favor? Two against?
- - What is your initial instinct and why?
- PHASE 2 — DESIGN YOUR PROMPTS
- Write out — before sending — the two prompts you will use. Apply all five prompt elements: context, goal, constraints, format, evaluation criteria. Include a request for AI to name its own uncertainty.
- PHASE 3 — GET AND EVALUATE AI OUTPUT
- Send your prompts and record the AI responses. Then audit each response:
- - Accuracy: Is any specific claim verifiable? Did you check it?
- - Completeness: What important point is missing?
- - Bias: Whose perspective seems underrepresented?
- - Appropriateness: Does this fit your specific need?
- PHASE 4 — BUILD YOUR OWN ARGUMENT
- Using your Phase 1 thinking and the best material from AI output (clearly identified), write a three-paragraph argument for your position. Every core judgment must be in your own words and reflect your own reasoning. You may credit AI for specific facts or framings you found useful.
- PHASE 5 — REFLECT
- Write one paragraph answering: How did thinking first change how you used AI? Where did AI help most? Where did your own judgment matter most? What would have been lost if you had skipped Phase 1 and just asked AI from the start?
In the workshop structure, why does Phase 1 (Think First) happen before any AI is used?
In Phase 4 of the workshop, what is the key requirement for your written argument?