Collective Campus

Critical thinking training in SydneyCheck the draft before you sign it.

Critical thinking training for Sydney teams using AI on real decisions, so they can question an output instead of filing it.

  • Half day or 1 day
  • In person or remote
  • 8 to 30 people
  • Tailored
  • Sydney, in person or hybrid
Team working through ideas on a whiteboard

Sydney

For Sydney teams who still have to defend the paper

Sydney analysts are handing first drafts, and sometimes the recommendation, to a model. The risk is judgment leaving the person who still has to defend the decision. This workshop rebuilds that check on the calls your team already makes.

We run it in person in Sydney or hybrid. It is not an anti-AI session. People learn when an output is safe to trust, how to spot a confident error and how to pressure-test the argument before it goes upstairs.

  • For Sydney analysts and leaders who are accountable for the call.
  • In person in Sydney or hybrid. No technical background required.
  • Built around the decisions and tools your team already uses.
  • Half day or one day.

◆ We've built capability for teams at ◆

The problem

AI is making us faster, and quietly making us think less.

Cognitive debt is real

An MIT study found heavy AI users showed weaker brain engagement, less ownership of their work, and worse recall, with effects that lingered after the AI was gone. MIT Media Lab, 2025.

Trust in, thinking out

The more knowledge workers trusted AI, the less critical thinking they did, offloading judgment instead of applying it. Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, 2025.

The skill fades with disuse

Across 666 people, heavier AI use tracked with weaker critical thinking, and the effect was strongest in younger, digital-native users. Gerlich, Societies, 2025.

What you'll walk away with

By the end, your team will have

  • A clear rule of thumb for when to trust AI and when to think it through themselves
  • The ability to spot flawed reasoning, bias and confident-sounding AI errors
  • Sharper questioning: better goals, better prompts, better challenges to an answer
  • Tools to pressure-test ideas and arguments as a team
  • Daily habits that keep the thinking muscle strong alongside AI

What we cover

The flow of the day

  1. 01

    Why AI erodes thinking

    The evidence, and the mechanism: cognitive offloading and how it creeps in.

  2. 02

    The critical thinking toolkit

    Reasoning, logic, and spotting the biases that trip everyone up.

  3. 03

    Interrogating AI

    Where thinking now lives: forming goals, writing prompts, and judging output.

  4. 04

    Argument and evidence

    Build a case, then break it. Steelman, red-team, and weigh the evidence.

  5. 05

    Thinking as a team

    Structured debate and dissent that gets to better decisions, together.

Who it's for

Who should be in the room

The heaviest AI users are the best fit.

Knowledge teams and analysts

The people leaning on AI daily. They are the most exposed to the erosion.

Leaders and decision-makers

Anyone whose real job is judgment under uncertainty.

Whole teams

Cross-functional groups who make calls together.

Format and logistics

How it runs

Duration

Half-day primer or 1-day deep dive.

Delivery

In person or purpose-built remote.

Group size

8 to 30 is the sweet spot.

Tailoring

Built around your team's real decisions and tools.

Steve Glaveski

Facilitator

Steve Glaveski

Founder of Collective Campus, 2× Wiley author and HBR contributor who writes on AI, productivity and how we work. Steve runs these sessions himself.

Proof

What changes afterwards

“They now question everything, see things through a different lens, and have started to spread that approach throughout the business.”

Leslie BarryHead of Innovation, Sportsbet

Related reading

Ideas on AI, independent thinking and the calls a team still has to make, on The S Curve.

Sydney

Questions about running this in Sydney

Can you run critical thinking training in a Sydney room?

Yes. At your office or a room in the city, or hybrid. Bring the decisions the team is already handing to a model.

Who should attend in Sydney?

Analysts and the leaders who sign. No technical background. It is about the judgment you still have to defend, not about becoming a prompt specialist.

How do we book a Sydney critical thinking day?

Use the contact form. Tell us the decisions, the tools, the group size and whether you want a half day or a full day.

Are you asking Sydney teams to stop using AI?

No. Use it without handing over the judgment you still have to defend. Faster is useful. Unexamined is not.

Keep your team's edge in an AI world.

Tell us the decisions your team is handing to AI. We will shape the day around them.