Philosophy 2630, Critical Thinking
22/01/08 22:37
Philosophy 2630, Critical Thinking
First, students show enormous improvement in being able to recognize common fallacious arguments: for example, in pre-testing they are often fooled by irrelevant reason (red herring), false dilemma, ad hominem, denying the antecedent, and many other standard fallacies; by the end of the course, they are able to detect such fallacies with great success
First, students show enormous improvement in being able to recognize common fallacious arguments: for example, in pre-testing they are often fooled by irrelevant reason (red herring), false dilemma, ad hominem, denying the antecedent, and many other standard fallacies; by the end of the course, they are able to detect such fallacies with great success
Philosophy 2630, Critical Thinking
First, students show enormous improvement in being able to recognize common fallacious arguments: for example, in pre-testing they are often fooled by irrelevant reason (red herring), false dilemma, ad hominem, denying the antecedent, and many other standard fallacies; by the end of the course, they are able to detect such fallacies with great success, and adequately explain the nature of the fallacy. We were not surprised to discover that students have improved markedly in their ability to detect bad arguments, as we regard this as the absolute minimum we would hope that students would gain from the class.
Second, assessment indicates that students typically show significant improvement in identifying positive (nonfallacious) argument forms, such as legitimate use of ad hominem and modus tollens. The improvement is not as striking, because students are more likely to initially recognize these as legitimate arguments (or at least the arguments are more likely to sound legitimate to them, whether they actually recognize them as legitimate or not). Their initial ability to explain why the argument is legitimate is, not surprisingly, much lower. Following the course, their ability to explain why these common argument forms are legitimate rises significantly.
Third, students show dramatic improvement in the ability to develop their own arguments. They are much less likely to use specific fallacious arguments (such as ad hominem fallacy and slippery slope); and just as importantly, they show marked improvement in actually developing arguments, with genuine argument structure of premises supporting conclusion (as opposed to merely stating and affirming their strongly held views). Furthermore, their ability to develop sustained arguments on specific topics, keeping the conclusion clearly in view and not drifting off into side issues, shows substantial improvement.
Our assessment process has made us aware of two areas in which we are less satisfied with the results of our critical thinking classes. First, students do not show great improvement in their ability to distinguish correlation from causation, and consequently do not recognize fallacious casual claims as well as we would like. Second, students do not show all of the hoped for improvement in their ability to distinguish necessary from sufficient conditions, which results in mistakes on modus ponens, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, and affirming the consequent argument forms. Assessment has made it clear that the problems there are not in recognizing the forms, but in translating ordinary language statements into the appropriate form. Faculty teaching the course have been alerted to these problems, and are giving special time and attention to those areas in class; and we are working on additional exercises that would be available to all sections of the course, dealing with those specific areas.
There are also some further improvements we would like to make in our assessment process, in order to gain better understanding of how well students are able to incorporate what they have learned in critical thinking into their further studies and work. First, we would like to track students who have completed a course in critical thinking and compare them with a “control group” of similar students (in terms of major, gpa prior to taking the course, and perhaps standardized test scores, etc.) to see if there is any effect on subsequent gpa. This will be, obviously, a long-term project, and we are still in the planning stages.
Second, we would like to have a better means of evaluating students’ ability to incorporate their critical thinking skills into their writing; however, having students write an extensive paper merely as a precourse baseline seems to be an excessive burden on students’ time. This is an issue we are still examining.
While obviously we have no systematic long-term assessment program for our critical thinking course, we have interesting anecdotal results from the survey the department sends to our graduates (and of course the survey return rate is not 100%, and the returned survey clearly not qualify as a representative sample). A number of those students have reported that their critical thinking skills have proved quite helpful in their jobs as well as in other aspects of their lives (such as when serving on juries); and that they have retained a substantial part of what they learned in critical thinking as a result of using many of those skills on a regular basis.
First, students show enormous improvement in being able to recognize common fallacious arguments: for example, in pre-testing they are often fooled by irrelevant reason (red herring), false dilemma, ad hominem, denying the antecedent, and many other standard fallacies; by the end of the course, they are able to detect such fallacies with great success, and adequately explain the nature of the fallacy. We were not surprised to discover that students have improved markedly in their ability to detect bad arguments, as we regard this as the absolute minimum we would hope that students would gain from the class.
Second, assessment indicates that students typically show significant improvement in identifying positive (nonfallacious) argument forms, such as legitimate use of ad hominem and modus tollens. The improvement is not as striking, because students are more likely to initially recognize these as legitimate arguments (or at least the arguments are more likely to sound legitimate to them, whether they actually recognize them as legitimate or not). Their initial ability to explain why the argument is legitimate is, not surprisingly, much lower. Following the course, their ability to explain why these common argument forms are legitimate rises significantly.
Third, students show dramatic improvement in the ability to develop their own arguments. They are much less likely to use specific fallacious arguments (such as ad hominem fallacy and slippery slope); and just as importantly, they show marked improvement in actually developing arguments, with genuine argument structure of premises supporting conclusion (as opposed to merely stating and affirming their strongly held views). Furthermore, their ability to develop sustained arguments on specific topics, keeping the conclusion clearly in view and not drifting off into side issues, shows substantial improvement.
Our assessment process has made us aware of two areas in which we are less satisfied with the results of our critical thinking classes. First, students do not show great improvement in their ability to distinguish correlation from causation, and consequently do not recognize fallacious casual claims as well as we would like. Second, students do not show all of the hoped for improvement in their ability to distinguish necessary from sufficient conditions, which results in mistakes on modus ponens, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, and affirming the consequent argument forms. Assessment has made it clear that the problems there are not in recognizing the forms, but in translating ordinary language statements into the appropriate form. Faculty teaching the course have been alerted to these problems, and are giving special time and attention to those areas in class; and we are working on additional exercises that would be available to all sections of the course, dealing with those specific areas.
There are also some further improvements we would like to make in our assessment process, in order to gain better understanding of how well students are able to incorporate what they have learned in critical thinking into their further studies and work. First, we would like to track students who have completed a course in critical thinking and compare them with a “control group” of similar students (in terms of major, gpa prior to taking the course, and perhaps standardized test scores, etc.) to see if there is any effect on subsequent gpa. This will be, obviously, a long-term project, and we are still in the planning stages.
Second, we would like to have a better means of evaluating students’ ability to incorporate their critical thinking skills into their writing; however, having students write an extensive paper merely as a precourse baseline seems to be an excessive burden on students’ time. This is an issue we are still examining.
While obviously we have no systematic long-term assessment program for our critical thinking course, we have interesting anecdotal results from the survey the department sends to our graduates (and of course the survey return rate is not 100%, and the returned survey clearly not qualify as a representative sample). A number of those students have reported that their critical thinking skills have proved quite helpful in their jobs as well as in other aspects of their lives (such as when serving on juries); and that they have retained a substantial part of what they learned in critical thinking as a result of using many of those skills on a regular basis.
|