Education Commons^™

Instructional Design And Facilitation Approaches That Promote Critical Thinking In Asynchronous Online Discussions: A Review Of The Literature, Laura Schindler, Gary J. Burkholder Jr

Center for Research Quality Publications

Asynchronous online discussions (AODs) are often used to promote critical thinking in online courses; however, recent research suggests that levels of critical thinking in discussions remain low. Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus in the literature about the definition of critical thinking and many of the existing studies focus on one specific cognitive construct. Therefore, it is unknown which instructional approaches have the strongest empirical support for promoting critical thinking across multiple cognitive constructs. The purpose of this article is to present a review of the literature related to instructional design and facilitation approaches that promote critical thinking in …

The Game Of Chess: A Conduit To Increase Student Academic Achievement In Pinellas County: A Policy Advocacy Document, Douglas Williams

Dissertations

The research about chess and education is very compelling. The usefulness of chess as an educational activity is particularly valid among children whose minds are entering the cognitive phase of abstract thinking. However, chess is useful among all age groups. Chess has been shown to improve cognitive abilities among educationally low-functioning students, and it has been shown to help students academically when traditional methods have failed to produce the desired outcome. Most people think of chess as a game, and I think the time has come for educators to think about chess in a different light. It is a game, …

How Do Middle School Core Content Area Teachers In A Title 1 School Use Cooperative Learning In The Context Of High Accountability For Student Proficiency: A Multiple Case Study, Martha Cunigan-Wells

Dissertations

This action research case study describes how content area teachers in a middle school with low reading achievement levels utilize cooperative learning and curriculum integration (with a focus on the integration of literacy skills and thinking skills) in their content area given the current context of accountability for student mastery of tested core content outcomes. The participants were four urban middle school teachers from the core areas of science, social studies, mathematics, and language arts who had varying levels of training and experience with cooperative learning and curriculum integration. Data sources included audio-recorded pre-conferences, video-taped classroom observations, audio-recorded post-conferences, and …

Critical Thinking And High-Level Discourse: Teaching, Learning, And Professional Development In A 1:1 Environment, Valorie L. Zonnefeld, Ryan G. Zonnefeld

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.

A Socratic Café For Critical Inquiry, Jody Piro, Gina Anderson

Jody Piro

This presentation will explore the completed research inquiry that developed from our overt attempt to promote critical thinking in an online forum. The implications for advancing critical inquiry in online formats for interdisciplinary university content areas will be addressed. The objectives of this session are twofold: 1) to introduce participants to the nine intellectual standards (Elder & Paul, 2007) used to analyze the critical thinking and Socratic questioning in our research, and 2) to discuss the structuring of critical analysis in participants' own classrooms. Participants can expect to participate in a cooperative learning activity to practice the use of Intellectual …

Genres Of Dialogic Discussion In High School English: A Cross-Case Study Of Two Courses, Wendy Keyser

Doctoral Dissertations

This cross-case ethnographic study examines genres of discussion in two public high school English courses to explore the interplay between dialogism, structure, and critical and collaborative thinking practices. Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism and speech genres as well as Vygotsky's concepts of thinking and language and the zone of proximal development provide the theoretical premise of this research. Data sources included field notes, audio recordings and transcriptions, artifacts of the teacher's handouts and students' written work, informal conversations, and an interview with the teacher. I used discourse analysis and grounded theory to analyze the data, looking at both lively and problematic …

Building-Up Student Success, Maria Babiuc-Hamilton

Maria C. Babiuc-Hamilton

Students' ability to think critically is essential in achieving success not only in college, but also later in their jobs. In order to increase students' long term performance, the general education program at our university was completely restructured to allow the introduction of three required credit hours in critical thinking across curriculum at the freshmen level. The dissemination of the learning outcomes is complicated, because this course is not content driven. The solution is for students to including a meta-cognitive reflection with their assignments, describing their personal academic plan and their experience with the learning process. This proposal presents the …

Welcome To The University Libraries Poster Session!, Erin E. Rinto, Melissa Bowles-Terry, Rachelle Weigel, Nancy E. Fawley, Rosan Mitola, Amanda Melilli, Amy Jo Hunsaker, Jennifer L. Fabbi

Lied Library Open House for the 2014 American Library Association Conference

Over the past eight years, the UNLV Libraries have led and contributed to campus initiatives to revise the undergraduate curriculum and student learning outcomes at UNLV. Through formal and informal leadership roles, librarians helped to create the University Undergraduate Learning Outcomes (UULOs) in the areas of Intellectual Breadth and Lifelong Learning, Communication, Inquiry and Critical Thinking, Global/Multicultural Knowledge and Awareness, and Citizenship and Ethics and a revised model for general education.

In Fall 2011, the Faculty Senate approved a vertical pathway of key courses, which serve to integrate and assess the UULOs from a student’s first year of college through …

Student Government Leadership In The 21st Century : Its Importance And Why It Must Be Supported., Spencer Scruggs

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Student Collaboration Online In A Critical Thinking Course, Bob Schoenberg

Bob Schoenberg

This article identifies several benefits of student online collaboration and describes a number of collaborative tools that can be used without charge. The author also shares with readers several different strategies for promoting collaboration, including some of his personal tips and suggestions, based on his experience of teaching an online course on Critical Thinking at UMass Boston. The author argues that online education offers many opportunities for students to learn a variety of subjects, think critically and work collaboratively. However, for online faculty to be effective in their teaching they need training and experience.

Critical Thinking And The Languages Of Stem, Connie H. Rickenbaker, Sally Gilbreth

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Participants in this session will learn about the critical thinking strategy of SEEI (Nosich, 2011) as used by both high school and university students. SEEI (State, Explain, Example, Illustrate) has a strong connection with the languages of STEM (Baber, 2011) which will be shown by the presenters. Participants will have the opportunity to implement and share their own SEEIs as part of the group discussion.

Teaching Information Fluency: How To Teach Students To Be Efficient, Ethical, And Critical Information Consumers, Carl Heine, Dennis O'Connor

Publications & Research

Searching is becoming easier than thinking. Enter a query in a search engine, and the searcher is instantly flooded with results. Information has never been easier to retrieve and consume. At the same time, determining the quality of the results remains a daunting task. Despite the attempts to make search tools "brain dead easy"¹ to use, searching that reduces the need to think invites problems. Machines cannot reliably predict what each individual is hunting for, machines cannot determine what is credible, yet that is the direction search engine development is headed.

A Mixed-Methods Study Of Teachers' Perceptions Of The Impact Of The Common Core State Standards On Elementary Students' Abilities To Think Critically, Chris Blanton

Education Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation employed a mixed-methods design to ascertain the perceptions of elementary schoolteachers in relation to the impact the Common Core State Standards had on their students' abilities to think critically. The participants were teachers from three schools within the same district in western North Carolina. Quantitative data were collected via a 5-point Likert scale survey distributed via Survey Monkey. Qualitative data were collected via open-ended questions and focus group interviews. The data were collected to answer the research question, "What is the impact of the Common Core State Standards on the critical thinking abilities of students?" The researcher designed …

Enhancing Educators’ Skills For Promoting Critical Thinking In Their Classroom Discourses: A Randomized Control Trial, Raisa Gul, Shehla Khan, Azra Ahmad, Shanaz Hussein Cassum, Tanveer Saeed, Yasmin Parpio, Joanne Profetto- Mcgrath, Donald Schopflocher

School of Nursing & Midwifery

The literature reveals that educators find it challenging to foster critical thinking (CT) in their students if they have not learned how to use CT in their educational system or training. This paper reports findings from a national research project that was undertaken to enhance the educators’ ability to promote CT in their teaching practices. Using a randomized control trial design with a pre- and post-test, 91 educators from 14 of the 17 schools of nursing in Pakistan consented to enroll in the study and 72 completed the study. The intervention included 40 hours of learning experience during two workshops …

Information Literacy Skills As A Critical Thinking Framework In The Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum, James E. Van Loon, Heather L. Lai

Library Scholarly Publications

Information Literacy (IL) instruction embedded into the engineering design curriculum can provide a framework for the development of critical thinking skills which are essential for students to master to solve open-ended engineering problems. At Wayne State University, a lecturer in biomedical engineering (BME) and a science librarian are collaborating in an ongoing effort to integrate IL instruction into the BME undergraduate design curriculum. The paper will provide a vision and rationale for integrating IL instruction into the engineering design curriculum, and discuss aspects of the Wayne State effort to effect this integration. A review of the place of critical thinking …

Entr/Mgnt 421: Initiating And Managing Entrepreneurial Growth—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Varkey K. Titus Jr.

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

My primary goal for this portfolio is to codify the processes and goals of this course in a manner that can be transferred to other instructors. Students consistently comment on how much they enjoy the participatory and interactive nature of the course; I would like to formally document methods to create an interactive classroom that aligns with the expectations we have of senior-level entrepreneurship students regarding critical thinking and communication skills.

Re-Examining The Literature Review: Purposes, Approaches, And Issues, Mary Renck Jalongo, Kelly Heider

Kelly Heider