Hi Scimea,
I took Critical Thinking in my second year. I got a decent mark, but some of my friends didn't. The course is quite easy. In fact, almost too easy (at first). In my experience, students start to think they understand it and stop reading the textbook, but then get far behind and start doing bad on the quizzes. My advice to you would be to
not slack on the readings! Make sure to read the chapters, since new types of problems are introduced each week that
BUILD on the previous ones... so you need to have the foundation there to understand future problems, etc. Second, memorize all the terms and
types of falicies... eg. the Straw Man Facilty, etc.
Now you're probably thinking.. ok.. what the heck is the Straw Man Falicy? Well, Critical Thinking is a psychology course (its also cross-listed with Communication Studies), and the purpose of the course is mainly to break down arguments and find their weaknesses so you can combat them. Very interesting, and great for people like... lawyers for example, or even good for business people who in the future may have to argue their point of view, etc. When people argue, they build their arguments following a certain structure/patterns... and sometimes their arguments can not make any sense, or could backfire on themselves. Politicians do this
a lot by structuring what they say very carefully in politics for their speeches, etc.
The class, at least when I took it last year, is structured so you attend lecture and the professor shows you examples of different types of arguments. For example it'll be like... "A report came out today stating that three pigs in England became sick from a human flu virus. Pigs are not human. Therefore, the virus must not be a human flu virus". The professor then asks the class what could be wrong with this statement. He/she then shows multiple choice answers of a list of facilities (rules and theories that explain holes in arguments). The class chooses an answer, and the professor says what the right answer is.
This continues for a dozen or so questions every class... and you keep trying new types of brain puzzling questions, and being introduced to new theories/facilities you can apply to find how to deconstruct them.
You then have a series of short online quizzes... they are multiple choice. You do them online in a small amount of time and get a grade on them. These quizzes then count for a good chunk of your mark. You also have a midterm (which is also multiple choice but more questions), and an exam (same deal... lots of m/c questions and worth a lot of marks!).
There's no tutorials... its all lectures. No papers, its all m/c quizzes and tests. Attendance is not taken, but if you miss a lecture you will be confused the next lecture since each one builds on the last and they are a few hours long (so missing one
is a big deal!). Make sure you study hard and do well on the quizzes, as they can add up fast at the end. Also, the midterm is usually a lot trickier than you think... with questions you won't expect... so study hard and know the falicies.
There's also quizzes you can take for fun on the textbook's website just to practice, etc.
Lecture notes... IMPORTANT! When I took the course the professor put the lecture notes on webct and you could download them and print them off. Remember, lecture 'notes' are word docs with loads of prep/sample questions, and definitions of the facilies, etc. But the questions
dont have answers in them... so thats why attending lecture is important because then you can circle the right answers to study later for the midterm/quizzes/exam, etc. If you have a laptop, then it's great cause you can download the Word file and also put notes beside the answer so explain WHY it was that answer (cause it'll help you if you're confused why that was the answer selected...).
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Now, onto your question about a Course Outline. When I took it, the course was on webct (so you can't see that stuff). However, I was able to dig up an old course website from a few years ago that you can look at.
It has the course outline (remember, its outdated, so things may have changed since then) and it also have course notes and stuff you can look at.
See the site
here.
Goodluck!!
--Chad
