Critical Thinking in the age of GenAI

This tutorial covers how using library resources may augment your critical thinking skills, by providing credible, authoritative and quality sources to support your claims. It is developed by Olivier Charbonneau, Senior Librarian at Concordia University, for the John Molson School of Business course titled COMM 227 Interpersonal and Critical Thinking skills.

GenAI tools

BE VERY CAREFUL when using GenAI tools for your project. These tools are designed by corporations in the United-States and they may not reflect the reality in Canada or Québec. And, even if you provide the most elaborately crafted prompt, nothing certifies that they are correct, or citing credible, recent and authoritative sources. Would you really trust a system that uses data from Reddit for your professional work? I recommend that you focus on trusted methods for learning this topic: locating credible, authoritative, recent and accurate sources yourself, and then reading them to learn.

Remember, if you are copy-pasting from a GenAi tool, you have to cite the source. Also, remember to ask your professor about disclosure requirements for using GenAI tools. Failure to do so may result in contravening in the Academic Code of Conduct.

This being said, Concordia University provides free access to certain GenAI tools. Concordia University Library offers a free tutorial on using GenAI for students, called the GenAI Quickstart Guide. Similarly, you can access free lectures on prompt engineering (and many other topics) through Concordia University’s subscription to Udemy.