Critical Thinking Assignments for Transformation
Alyssa Sloan, Professor & Program Director of Communication, King University
THIS TOOLKIT WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO
- This webinar/toolkit encourages and exemplifies critical thinking experiences for students to transform their minds, behaviors, and relationships.
KEY OBJECTIVES
- Discuss critical thinking and introduce a model for critical thinking;
- Describe a specific course assignment that requires critical thinking and guides students toward transformation;
- Promote development of similar assignments that push students towards transformational ends.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS TOOLKIT
- Identify steps in the critical thinking process
- Learn from the webinar presenter’s critical thinking assignment example
- Develop a similar assignment by first selecting a course/topic, then creating an assignment or series of connected assignments that guide students through the critical thinking process, and finally give students an opportunity to report change and future goals.
DESCRIPTION
As educators, we guide our students to new knowledge and skills amid harsh realities. For example, our world is still enduring a novel pandemic; our nation continues to exist in rising political polarities; addiction to online stimuli seems to crescendo with each new year.
College faculty carry a communal desire to challenge our students to evaluate their world and then choose a thoughtful life path. We guide our students in critical thinking experiences that can renew and transform their minds, behaviors, and relationships. This webinar will describe a media communication assignment that nudges students towards self-selected transformation.
The goal is to disclose and encourage pedagogy that renews and transforms ethical communication and thoughtful decision-making for the next generation—beginning in classrooms and rippling forth into workplaces, online platforms, civic spaces, and other public institutions.
Example of a critical thinking assignment
Scaffolded learning in Dr. Sloan’s Introduction to Media Communication course requires critical thinking and promotes personal transformation pertaining to media consumption. The learning experience incorporates a critical framework and requires different assignments (stages in a course project) that guide students to transformative ends. In Dr. Sloan’s scaffolded critical thinking assigment(s), students are required to:
1. Learn the Media Literacy and the Critical Process
- Campbell et al.’s (2019) critical process includes “five overlapping stages that build on one another:” description, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and engagement. This involves “subordinating one’s personal taste to the critical ‘bigger picture’” (p. 27).
- Case studies in the textbook and the supplemental examples discussed in the course often intentionally include less-popular perspectives so that students are exposed to and get the opportunity to critically process dissenting opinions.
2. Identify a Media Change
- Students determine a media change to make during the course.
Mass media influences our thoughts, our time, our democratic participation. In other words, mass media is important—and its equally important that we evaluate how we engage with and are impacted by media. Therefore, each student will reflect upon your media consumption habits (time spent online, types of content viewed, etc.). Then, identify one experimental change to make during your time in our class. You’ll report about this actual change, so take time to consider your change. Here are a few ideas:
— Actively keep track of your phone use for 2 weeks & reflect on what you learn about yourself
— Participate in a “media fast” where you give up some media habit for 14 days
— Stop a harmful habit for two weeks (i.e., too much gaming, viewing pornography, stalking an ex, online bullying, etc.)
— Try out one of Zomoradi’s mindful-use-of-technology challenges like single-tasking or de-cluttering (see pp. 54-55 in our textbook)
The bullet points above are just ideas; students are free to make a different substantial, intentional change of your choice! - Create a clear start date and the end date for your selected media experiment. Explain why you’ve selected that range of time.
- Detail how you’ll track data and impact. For example, will you write down thoughts daily? Record changes in your free time? Download an app that summarizes your phone use and screen capture the daily results? Interview close relationships about the impact of your experiment? Be clear about how you will track the experiment!
- Find and summarize at least three credible sources that address your selected media change. One source must be a peer-reviewed journal article. Using your own words, write a thoughtful paragraph summary of what you learned from each reading; be sure the summary is relevant to your media-change topic.
3. View, then Analyze, The Social Dilemma
- The Social Dilemma (2020) is a Netflix docu-drama about the design and impact of social media. As a class, we view the film.
- After, students write a 3-page APA style paper that addresses four prompts (students must answer prompts 1 & 2 below, and then select any other two prompts to explore):
1. What is the film The Social Dilemma trying to persuade its audience of? What info does Orlowski (2020) present in order to convince viewers about social media?
2. As a result of information presented in The Social Dilemma, what—if anything—should be done regarding social media use in our society?
• If you believe action should be taken to curb/change/improve social media use in our society, who should take charge? What specific actions should be taken? (For example, one may believe that government regulation is necessary whereas others believe alterations begin at home.)
• If you believe no action is necessary, explain why. If no action is taken, what are some possible outcomes?
3. Are certain online platforms—i.e., Facebook, Google, TikTok)—more harmful or manipulative of its users than others? Why or why not, explain?
4. How does social media use impact the proliferation of conspiracy theories? What impact does the instant spread of such ideas have on our democracy?
5. Who bears the responsibility to change how our society utilizes/views social media? What action(s) could they take to implement change?
6. How can our society balance individual freedom of choice to use social media as they see fit, while also attempting to curb the negative (self-serving) impacts of social media companies?
7. Describe social media’s likely evolution in the coming years/decade/generation? Base your description on some realistic trends/data.
8. Does social media create a more divided society in terms of opinion/beliefs? How so? Explain.
4. Assess Personal Media Change
- Throughout the course, students have been thinking about critical consumption of media. For this final assignment in the course project, students write a 3-4 page APA style paper about the experienced media change. The critical process is applied as guide:
1. Description: Briefly restate your media change, when you began and ended the experiment, and how you tracked data.
2. Analysis: Summarize your data. What patterns emerged?
3.Interpretation: What does your tracked data mean to you? How successful were you in meeting your media change goal?
4. Evaluation: How did you feel during the media change? What emotional, relational, (or other) impact did the change have? In what way did this course and this change make you more critical of mass media messages?
5. Engagement: Explain how you’ll be different moving forward. Explain any long-term impact(s) of this media experiment. For example, will you continue to make this media change? Will you talk to others about your media change? How will you be more media literate in the future?
Next Steps/Framework
Critical thinking is purposeful, reflective thinking. However, critical thinking is more powerful when students see and experience the roadmap for themselves. So, exposing students to a process for critical thinking and then guiding them through that process repeatedly are key next steps. Familiarity with a critical thinking process is what enables that more thoughtful approach, so educators are encouraged to practice and assign the process in different ways throughout a course. For example, in-class discussion of the process followed by in-class application (walk through the process using an topic). Later, perhaps the next class, have the students engage in that process in pairs. Maybe next, expose them to new information, then have the students write a paper on the topic by following the critical process.
Any credible critical thinking process is a useful framework, two were discussed in this webinar: Facione’s (1990) critical thinking skills or Campbell et al.’s (2019) critical process.
REFLECTION
I began this assignment out of a personal questioning of the (positive AND negative) power of social media in my life and in the lives of my students. The major challenge of this assignment is the self-report nature of transformation. The implementation of the assignment I describe means promoting more opportunities for critical thinking (compared with rote memorization), especially on topics that impact our lives now and into the future.
CONNECTED RESOURCES TO EXPLORE
- Murawski’s (2014) publication titled Critical Thinking in the Classroom…. and Beyond
- Meisel and Fearon’s (2006) article about Supporting Better Ethics Through Critical Thinking
- Facione’s (2020) update of Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts
- Facione’s (1990) landmark publication about Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. Research Findings and Recommendations
- An easy-to-read explanation of Critical Thinking and its value, written by Facione (n.d.) for a STEM school
