Questioning Authority: How the Socrates Plugin Uses AI to Foster Critical Thinking2025 ETUG Spring Workshop: Show Me How You Did It – Day 1, May 22, 2025
Richard Tape, Jon
Festinger | Questioning Authority: How the Socrates Plugin Uses AI to Foster
Critical Thinking
Join us to take a look at Socrates, an open-source WordPress plugin that brings the art of Socratic questioning into the digital age. Born in the classroom at UBC’s Allard School of Law and refined through years of student feedback, Socrates now leverages generative AI to create contextual, thought-provoking questions that challenge students to examine their own arguments and assumptions.
In this session, we’ll demonstrate how Socrates serves both students and instructors by:
- Guiding learners through personalized critical thinking exercises without AI hallucinations
- Automatically curating and publishing “News of the Week” posts that keep course content relevant and form a pedagogical basis for deeper learning
- Building a searchable knowledge base of discipline-specific resources that students can access during their questioning journey
We’ll share our development journey since 2018, show you the current capabilities through live demos, and discuss our roadmap for the future. Whether you’re teaching law, philosophy, science, or any discipline where critical thinking matters (so… all of them!), come discover how Socratic questioning can be reimagined for today’s connected classroom.
Richard Tape is a Programmer Analyst at the University of British Columbia
Jon Festinger is a Law Professor at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law
Attachments: Transcript (PDF, Word)
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