INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING

PHIL 1010.01 -- SUMMER 2000

Bob Corbett, instructor

100% on-line course

Meets: From Monday June 5 until Saturday July 28, 2000

BELOW YOU WILL FIND INFORMATION ON:

• Course Objectives
• Readings
• Course Requirements and Grading
• Syllabus

• Course Objectives (short version).

  Critical Thinking is an activity in which we all already engage. Most of us do it in a fairly unskilled and erratic manner. This course is aimed to help students become more reflectively aware of critical thinking and to practice some of the basic skills needed to practice it well.

  Note that I say I aim:

  • to make you more reflectively of thinking critically
  • to practice some skills

  I consciously avoid claiming that I can TEACH this skill. I believe the critical thinking "teacher" is sort of in the same position as a coach in a sport. There are basic skills which most serious players will have seen and tried, often adapting some version of these skills into their game. The coach tries to point out, even name the various skills or "moves" and then works with the players to practice the skills. But some will get them and some not, and while discipline, commitment, seriousness of purpose and such things are great virtues and help in considerable measure, critical thinking, like sports, is not something at which a teacher/coach can guarantee success.

  I say a good deal more about the details of these skills in a longer essay. It is available on my course web site.

• Readings

  We will read a several short pieces by Corbett about various critical skills, and a three essays which are NOT about critical thinking, but which we will use for practice. I have posted all readings to my web site and you will not have any materials to purchase.

• Course Requirements and Grading

  We have only 8 weeks!! Further, we are working in a medium in which all communication is in print. The work load will be quite intense, made up of many assignments, most of them relatively short. The course will be divided into 16 mini-units, each focussing on some particular skill or tactic of critical thinking.

  There is no formal meeting time. Normal summer courses meet at least 3 times a week for a period of 2 hours. We will work on a schedule of two 3-day periods a week, Sunday never counted. Unit one of each week will be M-T-W. Unit two of each week will be Th-F-S (S is for Saturday).

  Specific course requirements will be:

  1. Formal assignments on the readings from Corbett and the other assignment materials.
  2. Responses to the work of other students.
  3. Responses to Corbett's comments on your papers.

  Grading: While I will grade each individual piece (some just as accepted or not accepted), the grade of the course will not be mere the sum of the individual grades. Rather, I will take into account an overall sense of quality in the general tone of one's work. However, the sum of one's individual grades will certainly be a strong indication of where one stands. Each piece, long and short alike, will carry the same relative value.

  Two important additional notes:

  1. On-time work is crucial. We have a very tight schedule and the work is cumulative. You are free within the three day periods and may do that work about when you wish, you are not free to do the work as you wish in longer time periods. Each assignment will have a due date and there will be NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED FOR CREDIT. Period. None. So please face that issue as we get started.
  2. I will only give a grade of incomplete in a very unusual circumstance, one in which the student was doing all work in a timely and acceptable fashion and then some major catastrophe strikes, one for which the student can give evidence of and which is seriously debilitating. Even then, an incomplete would be negotiated toward the shortest reasonable time to fulfill the work with no extensions. In only the rarest occasions would a grade for a fulfilled incomplete ever be higher than a C.

  Basically the point is: there are time deadlines. Stay with them.

• The Syllabus

HOME