29th International Conference on Critical Thinking Concurrent Sessions
July 22, 2009 Berkeley, California
UofL faculty and staff teams were invited to present at the Critical Thinking Foundation's 29th International Conference on Critical Thinking occurring July 20-23, 2009 in Berkeley, California. This site documents the concurrent session presentations and provides access to the documents and handouts from the sessions.
View videos with more information and listen to our faculty speak on the University of Louisville's Quality Enhancement Plan, Ideas to Action (i2a) on iTunes U or within our media resources.
Abstracts
1) Implementing your institution's critical thinking initiative: Strategies for administrators, faculty, and staff
Patty Payette, Ph.D., Sharon LaRue, M.A., CPAT, and Karen Newton, MPH
University of Louisville Louisville, KY
This session will provide an overview of guiding principles for organizational change developed by staff and faculty at the University of Louisville. In 2007, the University launched a multi-year institutional transformation to infuse the Paul-Elder model across the undergraduate curricula as part of their quality enhancement plan (QEP) required by their regional accrediting agency, SACS-COC. After two years of designing and implementing their campus-wide vision for a shared focus on critical thinking skills with faculty and staff, UofL QEP staff and two colleagues will present their framework for success, explain lessons learned so far, and share examples of successful integration of the model.
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2) "Engineering" critical thinking: Faculty exemplars on course redesign and assessment from the University of Louisville's Speed School of Engineering
James E. Lewis, Ph.D., Jeffrey L. Hieb, Ph.D., and Tim Hardin, Ph.D.
University of Louisville Louisville, KY
The J.B. Speed School of Engineering is at the beginning of a multi-faceted project to incorporate the Paul-Elder model of critical thinking across the undergraduate engineering curriculum. This is in part to fulfill the University wide quality enhancement program titled "Ideas to Action: Using Critical Thinking to Foster Student Learning and Community Engagement". The program begins with the Introduction to Engineering course, ENGR 100, where critical thinking and the Paul-Elder model are explicitly taught. Implicit and explicit instruction of critical thinking continues in upper level courses. The purpose of this session is to investigate the intentional and transparent inclusion of critical thinking and the Paul-Elder model into specific engineering courses by examining some of the techniques used. The courses discussed in this session will be the Introduction to Engineering course, Differential Equations (a common engineering sophomore level course), co-operative seminars \ co-operative reports, and a senior level Electrical Engineering course.
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3) Strategies for teaching critical thinking across instructional settings: Pedagogy and best practices.
Cathy Bays, Ph.D., and Edna Ross, Ph.D.
University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky
The purpose of this session is to share the current evidence on how faculty can incorporate critical thinking in their class, lab, practicum/field learning environment. Upon completion of this session participants will be able to 1.) Examine the evidence for critical thinking; 2.) Select at least one strategy to enhance critical thinking in their educational setting; and 3.)Identify methods to assess critical thinking. This highly interactive session will use a combination of reflective questions, Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo and Cross, 1993), and iClickers to accomplish the learning objectives. Additionally, university faculty exemplars for incorporating the Paul-Elder critical thinking model in the learning environments will be shared with the participants. Lastly, the presentation will include literature and experiential based strategies for assessing critical thinking.
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4) The Paul-Elder Model in Action: Biology, sociology, and psychology faculty discuss their work with promoting critical thinking in their courses
Patricia Gagne, Ph.D., Jennifer Mansfield Jones, Ph.D., and Edna Ross, Ph.D.
University of Louisville Louisville, KY
The Paul-Elder critical thinking model is a useful resource for faculty who wish to explicitly structure critical thinking into their assignments, assessments and course design. Faculty at the University of Louisville are infusing the concepts and language of the Paul-Elder model into their instructional design decisions as part of their quality enhancement plan (QEP) required by their regional accrediting agency, SACS-COC. Because the model provides a common language and structure for the teaching and learning of critical thinking across the undergraduate curricula, faculty from different disciplines and departments can utilize it in their courses. University of Louisville faculty will share their exemplary use of the Paul-Elder model in a panel discussion of a junior-level sociology course, a freshman human anatomy and physiology laboratory course, and a large-lecture introductory psychology course.
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