CT Workshop:
Spring, 2006
Date: April 20, 2006
Summary
Presenters: Paul Haugen (Physics), Janet Robinson (Humanities), Heidi Speck (Philosophy)
Three members of the CT Subcommittee — Heidi Speck, Paul Haugen, and Janet Robinson — developed and served as presenters of a 60-minute workshop for faculty in the Spring semester. The workshop included four parts:
CT Definition & Resources. Heidi Speck proffered a definition of CT. She also provided participants with concrete examples of how to teach a collection of CT skills across disciplines (collected the previous semester from SCC faculty members). Finally, she presented an example of a major cognitive bias, the “confirmation bias,” that she teaches students in her courses to recognize. She also described activities she uses to help students learn about this strong and pervasive bias.
Physics Lab Demonstration. Paul Haugen took workshop participants through a demonstration he uses when teaching introductory-physics students how to develop and test alternative explanations for unusual physical phenomena using only their “common sense” (i.e., no mathematical formulas).
Film & CT. Janet Robinson showed how she uses films in her cinema courses to help students learn to think critically. The lessons she teaches are often general ones that do not depend on the use of films: they can be taught regardless of the topic (such as the context-dependence of perception and interpretation). She also encouraged faculty across disciplines to use films to help teach CT skills in their courses: students respond easily and thoughtfully to the issues raised in films.
Question & Answer. A discussion period followed in which workshop participants asked and discussed questions about how best to teach CT across disciplines. Participants focused especially on the importance of teaching students how to collect and analyze relevant evidence when evaluating claims. It is likely that this will be the main focus of the next CT workshop.
No formal assessments were used to evaluate this first CT workshop. Instead, we asked participants for feedback, which not only was uniformly positive, but also very useful for planning future workshops. Of most importance, participants found the concrete teaching examples to be of most benefit. Thus, in future workshops, we will be sure to include many such examples collected from a broad range of disciplines.
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