Final answer:
The student seems to be confusing a reductio ad absurdum strategy with a strawman fallacy. While a reductio shows the absurdity in an argument's premises by taking them to a logical extreme to point out a contradiction, a strawman misrepresents the position to attack it.
Step-by-step explanation:
When the reductio ad absurdum strategy is employed against an invalid argument, the technique often involves showing how the argument leads to a contradiction or an absurd conclusion. However, it looks like there is some confusion in the question. The phrase 'utilizes a weaker version of the position being argued against in order to make the position easier to defeat' describes a strawman fallacy, not a reductio technique. A strawman is a rhetorical technique where a person's actual position is misrepresented to make it easier to attack, while reductio ad absurdum, when correctly applied, takes an argument's premises to their logical extreme to demonstrate a flaw in the argument itself. It is important not to confuse these two distinct argumentative strategies.