It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
To every complex question there is a simple answer—and it is clever, neat, and wrong.
~ H. L. Mencken
Critical thinking is skeptical without being cynical. It is open-minded without being wishy-washy. It is analytical without being nitpicky. Critical thinking can be decisive without being stubborn, evaluative without being judgmental, and forceful without being opinionated.
~ Peter A. Facione, Think Critically, Pearson Education 2011.
These assignments can be used for papers, short essays, formal debates, or group discussions.
Resources:
Examples:
The idea here is to present students with open-ended situations. There is not one “right” answer; rather, students are assessed on how well they are able to choose among options and justify those decisions. Students may need to take into account a wide variety of variables (cost of materials, dealing with difficult clients or coworkers, patients who lie about symptoms, etc.).
Examples
These can be anything from a quick-and-easy discussion starter to the basis for an in-depth assignment.
Some activities overlap with scenario-based learning. But in other cases the activities are simply a way to start a discussion, to prompt critical reflection, or to introduce a difficult topic such as privilege.
Examples:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with traditional research papers, but bibliographies are a nice alternative for some classes. Students annotate each source to justify its use and explain what they learned, but you can also have them write a conclusion to integrate their sources.
Analyzing media is a great way to get students to think about possible biases or inaccuracies in how information is reported, or about unintended (or intended) consequences of how people and messages are portrayed.
Examples:
Resources for helping students evaluate websites:
The choice of a rubric or a list is often a personal one. Rubrics encourage more consistency in grading, but they are less flexible. And for simpler assignments, they may be overkill.
Examples:
Assessment doesn’t always mean grading. Sometimes it’s just a question of making sure that your students are “getting it.”
This helps students get multiple points of view, plus it can (maybe?) help cut down on grading time.
Examples:
This built-in tool can be used for both discussions and drop boxes. You get to choose how many categories you will have, how each one will be weighted, and
Demonstration of how to set up and use rubrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL1SZmbcuLc
This can have two benefits:
This can be a way to assess progress without a huge investment of energy. Some instructors then have students choose X number of assignments to turn in at the end as a graded portfolio.
Use the “track changes” feature in Word. This way all your comments automatically show up in colored text. Video overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqzn4mtVoic
Do you find yourself typing the same comments over and over again? Here are a couple of options for automating that:
Recording is often faster than typing, and students might be more willing to listen to comments than to read them.
Ways to accomplish this:
If students in online classes are turning in lots of shorter assignments, and you don’t care about page formatting, use a discussion forum instead of a drop box. Set the forum to “private journal mode,” which means that each student can only see their own posts plus your responses.