A Brief Summary of the Best
Practices in College Teaching An interesting challenge to college teachers to
continually learn to improve their teaching effectiveness. Many, if not most,
professional teachers at the college level lack explicit ongoing training in how to
teach. This interactive site, compiled by Tom Drummond of North Seattle Community
College, contains twelve categories of broadly applicable pedagogies with a brief but
useful bibliography.
Activities/Teaching
Aids Part of an extensive annotated bibliography compiled by Montclair
State University in New Jersey, this page lists games and activities that
promote critical thinking.
"A
Reform Strategy That Is (Quietly) Working" This brief
but cogent article by George H. Hanford, a member of the National Council on
Excellence in Critical Thinking, clearly explains how and why critical thinking approaches
to education are working to reform education practices. Very useful historical overview
for newcomers to the topic (in Education Week on the Web http://edweek.org
Feb. 10, 1993).
Articles
on Critical Thinking An annotated bibliography of 25 or so journal articles compiled
by Indiana University's Campus Writing Program (hence, a strong emphasis on Critical
Thinking as it applies to composition, though the range of articles is not limited to
writing--worth checking out).
Bloom's
Taxonomy and Critical Thinking An excellent set of
generic questions based on Bloom's cognitive model contributed by Barbara
Fowler to the Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum website at Longview
Community College in Lee's Summit, Missouri.
Brain
Teasers: Fun With Categorical Thinking Here's a direct link to some
entertaining interactive mind games from San Jose State University's
"Mission: Critical" critical thinking web page.
California Academic Press
Commercial sales of a broad range of materials emphasizing assessment.
Cave of
Magic An entertaining collection of Robert Simeon Fay's magic tricks,
puzzles, word games, and brain teasers that encourage critical thinking.
The site is family-oriented but mostly for grown-ups or very bright kids.
Visit Simeon's Cave of Knowledge.
Critical
Thinking Across the Curriculum Project (Longview Community College)
An extensive set of cross-curricular resources and interactive materials compiled by this Lee's
Summit, MO. community college. Provides a useful glossary, copious notes
and links on argument structure, a books and
articles bibliography (mostly in psychology and philosophy), and links to
discipline specific resources that range from philosophy,
psychology, English, and math to music, nursing, office systems, and even
automotive. Longview offers teacher-training seminars as well as links to
student courses. Try the "common sense" test.
Critical Thinking
at Sonoma The Critical Thinking Community at Sonoma, CA is the home of the Center for
Critical Thinking (Richard Paul, Director), the Foundation for Critical Thinking, the
International Center for the Assessment of Higher Order Thinking, and the National Council
for Excellence in Critical Thinking. A key resource for all CT initiatives, this site
supplies extensive start-up support including sample syllabi, lesson plans, grading
schemes, and online resources.
Critical
Thinking Essays, Articles, and Book Chapters Excellent collection of Critical
Thinking links compiled and maintained by law professor James Elkins at West Virginia
University. Useful for students as well as faculty.
"Critical
Thinking in an Online World" This is a fascinating article, the
second half of which is a broadly applicable overview of the nature and
the teaching of critical thinking. Found on UC-Santa
Barbara's website, Cabrillo College's Internet Librarian, Debra Jones, critically
evaluates the role of librarians and their responsibility for the education of
independent information seekers.
Critical Thinking
Materials Books and Commercial sales of teaching resources with over 160 listings.
Critical
Thinking Project Homepage El Paso Community College. This site displays
preliminary efforts of faculty and administrators involved in the Critical Thinking Project at
EPCC. It is primarily useful to EPCC faculty; however, it solicits input from
others as well.
Critical
Thinking Resources (ERIC) A library of Critical Thinking books for educators
emphasizing curriculum tools.
Critical
Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts A fine article by Peter A.
Facione
explaining and justifying critical thinking, includes endnotes, citations, and a list of
readings and government reports.
Essay Helps
An interactive online tutorial for Writing an Argumentative Essay created by David
Peterson at Santa Rosa Junior College. When you arrive at Peterson's Philosophy site,
click on the hyperlink for Essay Helps and then click on the Step by Step Tutorial
including a model essay. This site is student-friendly and it provides some formulaic
critical thinking sentences that writing teachers may find useful.
The
Fallacy Zoo Computer software designer Brian
Yoder (Earthlink) lists philosophy as one of his spare time interests.
He's compiled here a practical set of fallacies, with definitions and
real-world examples.
Framework
For Designing Questions For Online Learning Questioning is a significant instructional design
element for the promotion of effective critical thinking discussions. This article
by Lin Muilenburg (Univ. South Alabama) and Zane Berge (Univ. Maryland
Baltimore) describes a theoretical framework for designing questions for starting online discussion and follow-up questions to maintain the discussion. This framework is placed within a broader
context of discussion within a constructivist, online environment. Numerous examples of discussion questions which were
gathered from experienced online instructors are presented with the goal of preparing students and teachers to participate
effectively in online discussions.
Great
Thinkers and Visionaries Fascinating collection of links to
works of and about some of the great thinkers and visionary minds in
history. "This is a list of people whose ideas on how and where the world is - and should be - evolving, may be of interest to those
who want to understand the frontier of human thought, at least according to
[Alexander Chislenko's] opinion. Includes links ranging from Galileo and
Copernicus to Darwin, Hawking, Feynman, and even Timothy Leary!
Inquiry:
Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines Professional journal published by the
Institute for Critical Thinking at Montclair State University. A high quality forum for
evolving ideas on the theory and practice of Critical Thinking.
Intelligent
Humor Page When your brain is drained and your cheeks need some
exercise...
Interactive Critical
Thinking Tutorial San Jose State University's Mission Critical exercises in reasoning
provide a challenging way to enhance critical thinking skills. Test yourself.
Introduction
to Thinking Skills Compiled by Nancy Lockett, Staff Development Coordinator for AEA 7 Educational Services
in Cedar Falls, Iowa, this page is designed for busy practitioners trying
to design performance assessment
tasks that align standards and benchmarks with assessments that really measure what's valued and that incorporate higher
order thinking skills. Primarily for K-12, Ed.
Services' resources and teaching strategies are applicable for college
teachers as well.
Labyrinthink! :-)
Brain exercises via mazes This site is dedicated to Mazes, and features an interactive Maze program, information on
the movie "Labyrinth," a gallery of computer Mazes, pictures of life size Mazes, and
more. A-mazing!
NCTE
Teaching Ideas The National Council of Teachers
of English archive of practical teaching ideas on ESL, Journalism,
Literature, Reading, Technology, Writing, and Vocabulary selected from NCTE publications or
submitted directly by teachers.
Notes In
The Margin Some fine practitioners' tales published several times a year by the
Program in Writing and Critical Thinking (formerly freshman English) at Stanford.
Real
World Reasoning Some of the topics covered in this extensive list of links compiled by Peter
Suber at Earlham College include classic fallacies, constructing a logical
argument, elementary logic, informal fallacies, logical fallacies, and a guide to
detecting and supplying missing premises in arguments.
The
Socratic Method: A Lesson Plan A sub-site of Live Wire Media out
of San Francisco, this particular page is not K-12 specific and gives a
useful plan for including socratic pedagogy as well as tips for
facilitating the socratic method in the classroom.
Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking
Created by ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center, this digest discusses skills related to critical thinking and three specific strategies for teaching these skills: 1) Building
Categories, 2) Finding Problems, and 3) Enhancing the Environment. A brief
but valuable overview applicable to all disciplines.
Strawberry
Macaw's Puzzle Page
Interactive games that require strategic thinking. Try to beat the
Strawberry Macaw at Tic Tac Toe--it ain't easy! Or test your critical
thinking skills on "Fox and Goose" and other logic puzzles.
Entertaining.
Student
Course Evaluation Form
Peruse this interesting assessment tool from California Academic Press. How
would your students respond?
