Course Design Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills (FacultyFocus.com)

January 16, 2014

Almost every instructor has felt the pressure to cover more material over the course of a semester while simultaneously moving students toward higher levels of learning. Join us February 5 for an online seminar that will prepare you to foster critical, discipline-specific thought processes by focusing on powerful, fundamental concepts and the essential questions of your courses. You'll still cover course materials, but you'll learn to structure your classes and prioritize so that you also spend time on analysis and synthesis. In Course Design Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills you will learn to: Acknowledge and accept that students will not learn and remember every concept you present Recognize those concepts that are frequent and significant parts of your discipline's vocabulary Identify the fundamental skills and thought processes that are most necessary in and valuable to your discipline Develop activities that require students to analyze problems using the most fundamental and powerful concepts of your discipline Create authentic learning experiences that provide your students with opportunities to think the way professionals in your discipline think Engaged students participate in generative discussions of course material that organically advance their learning. You can create opportunities for those kinds of dialogues and interactions with the way you present course content, and you can learn how in Course Design Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills. Registration for this live online seminar is now open. Each online seminar package includes: unlimited connections to the live event, on-demand access for 30 days, a copy of the recording on CD, the complete seminar transcript, and all the handouts and supplemental materials. WEEK IN REVIEW Monday, January 12 Using Fundamental Concepts and Essential Questions to Promote Critical Thinking Could your students identify the most important concepts in your discipline? Do they leave your class understanding these most fundamental concepts, including the ability to reason using these concepts to answer essential questions? Do your students become critical thinkers who connect concepts and practices in your course with other courses? With their future professional lives? Tuesday, January 13 Plagiarism: An Interesting Disconnect between Students' Thoughts and Actions Throughout much of the literature on plagiarism in higher education, there is an implicit assumption that students who understand plagiarism, who have strong ethical views, and who declare not to engage in plagiaristic behavior are able to recognize and avoid it in practice. Wednesday, January 14 Effective Ways to Structure Discussion The use of online discussion in both blended and fully online courses has made clear that those exchanges are more productive if they are structured, if there's a protocol that guides the interaction. This kind of structure is more important in the online environment because those discussions are usually asynchronous and minus all the nonverbal cues that facilitate face-to-face exchanges. But I'm wondering if more structure might benefit our in-class discussions as well. Thursday, January 15 Five Tips for Dealing with Combative Students in the Online Environment Whether one teaches at the university, secondary, or elementary levels, all teachers encounter combative students. Even if you do everything right, there will be students who push your buttons. However, many teachers struggle with how to handle disciplinary problems with these students. Friday, January 16 Six Tips for Preparing Your Online Course Careful preparation is essential to the success of an online course "to provide a positive experience for the students and to be able to maximize your time with students so that you're not spending time on reworking things that weren't clear up front," says Ann Millacci, associate professor of education at the University of Cincinnati. In an interview with Online Classroom, she offered the following advice on preparing your course for your learners.