Here's a quick video [click here] that goes over my motivations and some of the way I phrase my rebuttals. I know that it's easier for people to hear it explained rather than read over.

I added a sample version of the slide deck I use in class under "Attachments". All you really need is a slide that creates the prompts for the class to read. 

Set Up

In my slide deck for the first day I have a slide that says the following:

Activity Time! (~15 minutes)

1. Introduce yourself to your table (Name, Hometown/State/Country, Major)

2. Name a food that isn't made better with either chocolate or ranch.

With the additional instructions that they have to look at it from the perspective of someone who loves chocolate and/or ranch. 

Introduction

This is an activity that can be used as an ice breaker activity at the beginning of the semester to normalize failure in your class. Students are forced to explore a contrarian view of what they believe would make food "better." Furthermore, the students have to persist through and learn from failure because the activity, in essence, it set up for them to "fail". 

This works great for an integrate lab setting where students are participating in both lecture and lab-based activities concurrently. I currently use it with my first-year students (FYS) in Introduction to Engineering (FSE 100) and our class size is 40 students (10 tables with four students at each). However, there is broad utility for the community because this can be applied at any level. 

My Motivations for Doing This

I use it on the first day of classes for a handful of reasons: 

(1) It is a very low stakes topic that students feel comfortable debating because there will be no one person at their table that is a clear "expert" at this topic. Students are curious to find the "right" answer. 

(2) It gives me an opportunity to walk to each table, hear their names (if they have preferred names) so I can start connecting faces/names together.

(3) It gives me an opportunity to introduce myself to them. I acknowledge that they will already know my name (if they signed up for my class) but a personal introduction to each table works well for me to be able to establish a good rapport with my FYS. 

(4) It allows me to set a precedent for the way I want my class to run - which I will go over a little bit below as well.

(5) Introduce the students to the idea behind with it means to be objective and how they should start to think about being able to quantify design requirements. "Better" is not a quality design requirement because it is not quantifiable. 

Set Up

In my slide deck for the first day I have a slide that says the following:

Activity Time! (~15 minutes)

1. Introduce yourself to your table (Name, Hometown/State/Country, Major)

2. Name a food that isn't made better with either chocolate or ranch.

With the additional instructions that they have to look at it from the perspective of someone who loves chocolate and/or ranch. 

What I Do 

After I give them a couple minutes to brainstorm with their tables, I walk around to each table, have the students introduce themselves to me, I introduce myself to them, and then I ask them to report out the food they came up with to me. At this time, this is just in front of their tables that they have already been discussing with, and not the whole class. I found it important for building their confidence in the classroom that they report out to just me prior to reporting out in front of the whole class. This consideration is due to the fact that this is most likely one of the first classes the FYS has been to yet. Regardless of whatever food they list, I rebuttal - no matter how silly it is.

Reporting Out

The main reason I always push back on the students, regardless of how silly it is, is because a majority of the students end up folding and agreeing with me. I use this as an opportunity to have students report to the whole class while I rebuttal back. What I’ve seen happen is one of two things: 

(1) The students jump in to support the other students POV against my rebuttal

(2) The students jump in and rebuttal for me

Either way, we get a very lively classroom discussion.