Critical Thinking CrCrTh601 Spring 1999
Profs. Arthur Millman, Philosophy Department and
Peter Taylor, Critical & Creative Thinking Program

NOTES ON TEACHING/LEARNING INTERACTIONS
Before, during, and after class--Critical thinking about course readings and discussions

CCT courses aim to help students become reflective practitioners (or "practicing reflectors"). We want you to questions actively what you are reading and doing--not just during class time, but all the time. In this spirit, the class meetings are designed assuming that you will have already done quite a bit of thinking, formulated questions, and connected the week's topics to previous week's topics and to your own interests and projects. Furthermore, after class you are expected to reflect on the class and integrate new perspectives into your notes, preparation for subsequent classes, and your developing projects. This style of teaching/learning may differ from previous courses, but we trust you can get into the swing of it.
Various components of the course are intended to contribute to this reflection/critical thinking:

1. Weekly Questions. Weekly handouts contain background notes and questions to guide your reading and preparation for class. Sometimes, in addition, questions are included for reflection after the class. Indeed, sometimes you might get more from a reading after experiencing the activities during the class.

2. A Journal with responses to and notes on readings, class discussions, clippings, and weekly questions. Through writing in your journal, you will be better able to weave the course material into your own thinking and practice, and to bring your own thinking into class activities. In preparation for class, you might write in your journal a commentary on readings, or, after class, review the readings and the class activities. In either case explore, when appropriate, the relationship between your work/interests and the readings/activities. We suggest carrying it with you at all times, so you can make entries when ideas come to you.
Journals will be collected for perusal twice during the semester. Bind together pages with post-its or otherwise indicate which bits you do not want us to look at. We want to get an overall impression of your developing process of critical thinking about course readings and discussions.

3. Submit journal "extracts" at least every two weeks during the semester. These should be more legible and structured than your average journal entries. Depending on your writing, you might revise and type up something you'd been writing more loosely in the journal. We comment on these extracts, and then you revise and resubmit them in response to our comments. Tthe final result may be more like a thoughtpiece or very short paper.

4. Clippings packet. To provide grist for your critical thinking, compile a packet of clippings and xeroxes of articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and websites. Use post-its to add your own reflections on specific points in the articles you choose, especially where you think critical thinking is needed. Submit the packets twice at the same time as the journal is reviewed. Write the full citation on each article, unless it is already included.

5. Critical Incident Questionnaires (CIQ). At the end of each class, you'll spend 5 minutes to reflect on the class by completing CIQs. We'll digest the responses, report back to you next week about them, and try to make changes to respond to your responses.

6. Learning experience project
Design, conduct, document a learning experience that applies critical thinking to the particular situation in which you teach and/or work. A sequence of 4 assignments is required: initial description with sources, class test run of the experience, complete draft report, and 1000-2000 word final report. In addition, you act as an assistant for another person conducting their learning experience.

7. Manifesto, with tips and examples, for critical thinkers (a.k.a. check-list for future CT efforts). The goal of this assignment is for you to finish the semester with a synthesis of elements from the course selected and organized so as to inspire and inform your efforts in extending critical thinking beyond the course. A search for manifestos on the WWW brings up some opinionated sets of pronouncements that aren't ideal models. Mr. Vargas's checklist at the end of The Thinking Classroom is a better model, but not the only way to select and organize what you want to take form this course. Another possible form is to invent a dialogue or multi-party conversation (see examples at www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/TL-TOC.html).
Your thinking about what to include may be stimulated by The Thinking Classroom, 185-199, and by McLaren's "Foreword," ix-xv, and Walters' "Introduction, '1-22, in Re-Thinking Reason.

8. End-of-semester Portfolio (*Optional, for "additional work" grade only). These should contain 4-6 examples--not necessarily your best products--that demonstrate the process of development of your thinking and work this semester. Journal entries, free writing, drafts, etc. may be included. Explain your choices in i) a cover note and ii) through annotations (post-its are a good way to do this).

9. End of semester Evaluations. We devote the whole of the last class to "taking stock":
a) to feed into your future learning (and other work), you take stock of your process(es) over the semester;
b) to feed into our future teaching (and future learning about how students learn), we take stock of how you, the students, have learned.
Standard evaluation forms are not very conducive to taking stock, so we have designed an additional evaluation form for you to complete.
Learning through dialogue around written work

"Revise and resubmit" is a characteristic feature of the teaching/learning interactions PT seeks with his students, and an extension of what AM has been doing for some time.

The process should not be seen as making changes to please the teachers or to meet some unspoken standard. It should be seen as using the eye of others to develop your own thinking and make it work better on readers. We will continue to request revision when we judge that the interaction can still yield significant learning; it does not mean your submission was "bad." Even when the first submissions of written assignments are excellent, angles for learning through dialogue are always opened up.

In our comments we will try to capture where the writer was taking us and make suggestions for how to clarify and extend the impact on readers of what was written. After letting our comments sink in you may conclude that we have missed the point. In this case, our misreading should stimulate you to revise so as to help readers avoid mistaking the intended point. If you do not understand the directions we saw in your work or those we suggest for the revision, a face-to-face or phone conversation is the obvious next step--written comments have definite limitations when writers and readers to appreciate and learn from what each other is saying and thinking.

A minimum of two in-office or phone conferences on your assignments and projects are required. We want want to reduce the chance that you avoid dialogue around comments on written work, dialogue through which profound issues are sometimes opened up about one's relationship to audience and influencing others.

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Read chapters 3 and 13 of Peter Elbow's Writing With Power for a wealth of insight about the processes of sharing written work and revising with feedback.

We encourage you to make use of class meetings and the list of others students' phone numbers to arrange pair peer sharing and commenting according to whatever terms you pre-arrange. This will enable you to expand the kinds of readers to whom you are responding and to avoid the trap of writing as if the reader is the professor who knows enough about the topic and your thinking to fill in what hasn't been said explicitly or clearly.

We keep carbon copies of our comments, but when you submit revisions, please resubmit the previous version(s) with our marginal notes.

Please revise and resubmit promptly. The yield for your learning is lower if you are no longer thinking about what you were at the time you wrote.

We may request revise and resubmit on project reports. If not enough time is left for revisions, we will submit an incomplete grade or, if you specifically ask us to do this, calculate and submit a final grade without an OK/RNR for the report.
Details about the Assessment system

For each of the two parts of the grade--Written assignments and presentations, and Participation and contribution to the class process--"basic work" gives you an automatic B+.
To have a chance--but not a guarantee--of getting a higher grade, "additional work" is taken into account.
If you do not complete the basic work, the grade is pro-rated downwards. A passing grade of C requires 50% of the assignments or items in the following:

Written assignments and presentations:
Basic work = 80% of assignments (9 of 11*) marked OK/RNR, which means "OK, Resubmission Not Requested." That is, you must submit assignments, revise in response to comments, and resubmit promptly until OK/RNR. For the final report to be OK/RNR, you must have revised in response to comments on the draft. *Clipping packet = 1 assignment.
Additional work = Final project will be graded.

Participation in and contribution to the class process:
Basic work = 80% of the following items (14 of 18): Attendance and prepared participation at the 14 class meetings and two required conferences, keeping a journal (reviewed twice), and assisting with another student's learning experience presentation.
Additional work = Active participation and End-of-semester Portfolio.

Rationale: Not grading the different assignments and granting an automatic B+ for the basic work is intended to keep the focus on appreciating and learning from what each other is saying and thinking. Even when the first submissions of written assignments are excellent, angles are often opened up for learning through dialogue around comments. We continue to request revision, not until a certain standard is reached, but as long as the interaction can still yield significant learning (see "Learning through dialogue around written work" above).

Additional options: 1) Alternative grading system: Students can, at the end of the semester, submit to be graded their full set of assignments and revisions. (Note: Last minute, overdue assignments cannot be added at this stage.) We will assign a grade based on the best version of each assignment. Similarly, grades can be requested for participation and contribution to class process. In both cases, if the grade turns out lower than under the system above, the better grade stands.
2) Half-value for unrevised assignments: Although we would rather no-one relies on this, at the end of the semester for students below the basic level, we count assignments that were submitted more or less on time, but were not resubmitted until OK/RNR, as half value. Similarly, half value is assigned when the student attends class, but was clearly unprepared.
3) There is no Pass/Fail option.
Basic course protocols/expectations

1. Make time, at least 6-7 hours/week, to work on the course outside class, especially when you have to collaborate with others on projects. Preferably, set aside clear block(s) of time to do this.

2. Be responsible about class activities (pre-reading, attendance, arrival on time, discussion, contact about non-attendance and late work)--don't wait for us to check in with you. If you miss a class, arrange to find out what happened and get the handouts given out so you can be prepared to participate actively in subsequent classes.

3. Make notes and reflect on the course readings even when we don't discuss them in class meetings.

4. If you come late to class, quietly but firmly join us--don't take a seat at the back or off to the side.

5. Read guidelines and rationales given in this course packet and in other handouts. The class meeting times are often too short to explain everything.

6. Use the 80% requirement in the assessment system (see above) to drop some assignments and miss some classes when you need to accommodate to competing demands from work and life in general.

7. Do assignments on a wordprocessor so you can revise them readily. Resubmit assignments when requested, responding to comments from me and other students. Submit assignments and revisions on due dates, or submit a note about when you plan to do so.

8. Bring journal/workbooks to every class, to draw from or write in during in-class activities.

9. Arrange WWW access and get an email address, either through UMB or a place, e.g., your local library, where you can use a web browser and access email during the week between classes.

10. Make suggestions about changes and additions to the course activities and materials. Provide copies of or references to current readings, websites, or other critical thinking materials. Support us as we experiment in developing this course.

Created 3 Feb. 99