Across the Curriculum
at Albuquerque TVI Community College
Archive of Teaching Ideas: Teaching idea for October 17-23, 1999
Greg
Murrell's idea
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This idea comes from Greg Murrell, Philosophy instructor, who has used this technique to focus and conduct a group activity and point to relationships among the various student responses to characteristics of CT, to show students
how to get to the CTAC website, and to use criteria like "clarity" and "depth" as criteria for assessment of written paragraphs.
This introduction to CT is done by having students identify various characteristics of CT in a large group brain-storming session. Get as much feedback/output on these characteristics as students present them. I broke it down by having them consider characteristics of the term "critical" separately from the term "thinking". Then we looked at how the two terms could be put together in a way that made sense to most of the students. Students were then asked to go to the definition page at the CTAC website here a TVI (http://planet.cnm.edu/ctac).
The assignment was to review the different definitions of critical thinking and to determine which one they thought was the best definition. They were also asked to write a paragraph explaining why they thought that the definition they picked was the best definition of critical thinking. Their written paragraph was assessed by looking for clarity and depth of understanding of the concept of critical thinking.
In order for students to clearly understand what was meant by clarity and depth of understanding as assessment criteria, a follow-up activity was conducted where students who did a good job on their why explanations were asked to read their paragraphs to the whole class. Discussion of clarity and depth of understanding followed.
Assessment:
It was a participatory exercise; everyone in class was involved in the class discussion up front and at the end of the exercise. The success of the activity was based on students having a general understanding of the concept of critical thinking. This understanding was assessed through students' ability to articulate in writing what they thought critical thinking is. Their ability to articulate their understanding with clarity and depth was the basis for the assessment.
If you try this teaching idea, please send us your feedback on its effectiveness in your classroom. Did you adapt this idea to a different course or purpose? Did it result in thoughtful learning? Suggestions for adapting, assessing or improving it?
| "I broke it down by having them consider characteristics of the term "critical" separately from the term "thinking". Then we looked at how the two terms could be put together in a way that made sense to most of the students." |
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| "It was a participatory exercise; everyone was involved in the class discussion..." |