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Features

The Ultimate Toolkit For Improving Critical Thinking

Built by world-class educators, Symbai combines the discipline of debate with the power of AI — giving you structured tools to map ideas, test arguments, and improve your critical thinking.

Symbai Isn’t a Chatbot — It’s a Critical Thinking Platform

Built for educators, learners, and professionals who want to develop the habits of expert thinkers — not just talk to AI.

Most AI tools are designed to please — Symbai was built to train.
Its educator-built suite of tools and intuitive user interface guide you through the same structured reasoning process used by world-class thinkers: clarifying assumptions, testing logic, and refining ideas through challenge and reflection.

The platform combines a critical thinking toolkit, an adaptive AI challenger, and a drag-and-drop canvas into one cohesive environment for visual, measurable reasoning — supported by over 150 pages of educator-authored resources.

  • For educators: Symbai brings structure and insight to classroom discussion and assessment through visual frameworks and growth tracking.

  • For learners: It transforms debates, essays, and study into guided reasoning practice that builds confidence and clarity.

  • For professionals: Symbai offers a private workspace for sharpening communication, decision-making, and critical thinking.

Symbai doesn’t just respond — it trains clarity, structure, and depth of thought.

Key Features

Formal Debate Structure

Every activity follows the rules and flow of competitive debating — giving students authentic, transferable skills beyond the classroom.

Visual Debate-Tree
(Mind Map)

Turn messy ideas into a clear, branching map of claims, evidence, and analysis — so students can literally see how strong arguments are built.

Debating Toolkit

Guide students to add evidence, demonstrations, and “why it matters” statements — scaffolding great paragraphs and better essays.

Classroom Controls

Disable the AI tutor for assessments, restrict copy-paste, lock after deadlines, or limit view to one side to reduce cognitive load.

Rapid Scenario Design

Generate complete mind maps/debate trees in minutes. Start with AI, then refine or hand-edit — minutes, not hours.

Teacher-Directed AI (Manual Seeding)

Manually input arguments Symbai will adopt, letting you steer debates and model the reasoning you want students to engage with.

Rebuttals & Counter-Arguments

Model critiques and counter-critiques directly in the flow to build true critical thinkers.

Differentiation at Scale

Send the right version to each student — scaffolds, difficulty, and visibility — without re-creating resources.

Progress Dashboard

See who’s started, focused time in full-screen, and performance signals — actionable evidence for teaching.

Motivating Gamification

Simple point system rewards good practice and keeps students engaged lesson after lesson.

Instant Essay Export

Turn any debate tree into a polished, printable/PDF essay — perfect for exemplars, model answers, and revision (teacher/tertiary access).

AI Course Builder

(Coming Soon)

Think Better. Argue Smarter. Learn Deeper.— Start Now.

Sign up for your free trial and experience how Symbai transforms debate.

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What others are saying

“I believe Symbai has the potential through its unique multi-AI approach to become ubiquitous in the field of critical thinking in the way that Grammarly is associated with writing or Quizlet is with flash cards.”



Nick Hanne 
Education Partnerships Manager at the Free Speech Union NZ

“Symbai fills a major gap in education — it equips students to think logically, independently, and critically. Unlike other tools, it offers a neutral, AI-driven platform where students can genuinely practise debating and refine their thinking. It’s like having a 24/7 mentor that challenges without bias. A powerful solution for those seeking depth over group think in today’s education landscape.”


Todd Roughton 
Former Principal, HSNZ

The Two Most Effective Ways to Improve Critical Thinking

Unified in Symbai

Debating

Hundreds of thousands of students across 60 countries choose to spend their free time in formal debating competitions because it improves their critical thinking skills. 

Formal debating improves:

  • Dynamic reasoning — adapting ideas under pressure

  • Strategic thought — anticipating and countering objections

  • Cognitive discipline — structuring arguments with clarity and purpose

Increases Critical Thinking By Up To 50%

Competitive debate produces greater critical thinking improvement than argumentation courses.
Allen et al. measured the improvement using the Watson–Glaser critical-thinking test — a gold-standard assessment of inference, deduction, and evaluation skills.”
Source

8.6% Critical Thinking Gains In Just 3 Weeks

Students who participated in debate competition showed statistically significant improvements in critical thinking scores after just three weeks.
An 8.6% improvement in critical thinking is the cognitive equivalent of dropping your resting heart rate from 70 to 64 BPM. That's not learning facts or techniques — that's developing lasting cognitive fitness.
Source

9 in 10 former debaters go on to earn at least one advanced degree.

Of 703 National Debate Tournament alumni, over 90% held a graduate or professional degree, and many held multiple advanced degrees.
Of the 703 former NDT debaters; 40% earned master’s degrees (MA, MSc, MBA, MEd, etc.), 20% earned doctoral degrees (PhD, MD, EdD) and many held multiple advanced or professional degrees.
Source
Argument Mapping

Argument mapping has been around for hundreds of years, used by philosophers, scientists, and modern critical-thinking educators to make critical thinking clearer by drawing it out.
 And for good reason: when done well, argument mapping is one of the most effective ways to improve critical thinking and develop sharper logical reasoning.

Argument mapping helps you:

  • Clarify reasoning by revealing the actual structure of your thinking
  • Expose weak links that get lost in normal prose
  • Build precision through visual logic rather than persuasive writing tricks
A simple argument map diagram showing a “Main Claim” at the top supported by a “Reason” and “Evidence,” along with an “Objection” connected to a counter-reason, illustrating the structure of logical argumentation.

Improves Critical Thinking Courses By Over 300%

Critical thinking courses that used argument mapping software saw students improve their critical thinking over 300% more than similar critical thinking courses.
Compared a standard logic class to one using argument mapping software. The mapping group made dramatically greater gains on a standardized critical thinking test, far exceeding typical semester improvements.
Source

One Semester Of Argument Mapping Produces 6-7x MORE Critical Thinking Gains Than One Semester Of Normal University Study

Semester-long CT courses using digital argument mapping consistently produced effect sizes of 0.7-0.85 on standardized critical thinking tests. By comparison, a typical university semester yields just 0.11
Source

9% Critical Thinking Gains In Just Weeks

Five weeks of an argument mapping-led course resulted in an average critical thinking gain of 9%
These gains were achieved with minimal explicit critical thinking teaching. The gains came from interactions with other students within argument mapping software.
Source

 

Debating develops the habits that critical thinking courses try to teach:

  • Dynamic reasoning — adapting ideas under pressure

  • Strategic thought — anticipating and countering objections

  • Cognitive discipline — structuring arguments with clarity and purpose

Increases Critical Thinking By Up To 50%

Competitive debate produces greater critical thinking improvement than argumentation courses.
Allen et al. measured the improvement using the Watson–Glaser critical-thinking test — a gold-standard assessment of inference, deduction, and evaluation skills.”
Source

8.6% Critical Thinking Gains In Just 3 Weeks

Students who participated in debate competition showed statistically significant improvements in critical thinking scores after just three weeks.
An 8.6% improvement in critical thinking is the cognitive equivalent of dropping your resting heart rate from 70 to 64 BPM. That's not learning facts or techniques — that's developing lasting cognitive fitness.
Source

9 in 10 former debaters go on to earn at least one advanced degree.

Of 703 National Debate Tournament alumni, over 90% held a graduate or professional degree, and many held multiple advanced degrees.
Of the 703 former NDT debaters; 40% earned master’s degrees (MA, MSc, MBA, MEd, etc.), 20% earned doctoral degrees (PhD, MD, EdD) and many held multiple advanced or professional degrees.
Source

If debating is the clash of ideas, argument mapping is the architecture that makes clear thinking possible.
 It’s the practice of breaking critical thinking into smaller parts — claims, evidence, objections, and assumptions — and arranging them so the logic becomes visible.

Argument mapping has been around for hundreds of years, used by philosophers, scientists, and modern critical-thinking educators to make critical thinking clearer by drawing it out.
 And for good reason: when done well, argument mapping is one of the most effective ways to improve critical thinking and develop sharper logical reasoning.

Argument mapping helps you:

  • Clarify reasoning by revealing the actual structure of your thinking

     

  • Expose weak links that get lost in normal prose

     

  • Build precision through visual logic rather than persuasive writing tricks

     

These benefits make it a powerful method for anyone looking to enhance critical thinking skills, improve decision-making, or analyze arguments more effectively.

But traditional argument mapping has limits:

  • Pen and paper mapping is slow and quickly becomes cluttered
  • Digital mapping tools speed things up but remain static
  • And because the map never talks back, even skilled thinkers can hit writer’s block when faced with a silent diagram