1. Building Case Studies for Reading and Critical Thinking

2. What Is Critical Thinking?

3. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) identifies critical thinking
as one of a set of skills
and defines it in terms of
performance on a task:

4. “Applied in combination, critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and problem solving skills are required to perform well on CLA tasks. We define these skills as how well students can evaluate and analyze source information, and subsequently to draw conclusions and present an argument based upon that analysis.”
“Architecture of the CLA Task,” 8.

5. How to teach critical thinking skills?

6. Life experience

7. Course in logic

8. Curriculum
of courses
in a major

9. Series of four integrative
seminars

10. Nothing—You have to be born with them.

11. The CLA has developed a set of tasks to measure reading, writing, and critical thinking skills.

12. Make an Argument
Critique an Argument
Performance Task

13. CLA in the Classroom

14. An initiative to help students
learn these skills, focusing on the performance task,
as the most integrative,
demanding, and immersive.

15. What is a
Performance Task?

16. A kind of case study:
A situation
A role
A task
A set of readings

17. But there are three
crucial, distinctive
features
of Performance Tasks:

18. The situation is fictional The readings are created

19. most crucially and distinctively, problematic evidence and
logical fallacies
are embedded in the readings.

20. Pause for epiphany

21. [Description of how, thirty years ago, college teachers had a very undeveloped understanding of how to teach many of the unspoken assumptions and expectations of academic writing. Now, thanks to groundbreaking teachers, theorists, and textbook writers in the 1980s, these assumptions and expectations are much more visible to us, and we now have strategies and assignments for making them visible to students.]

22. Might strategies and materials like Performance Tasks
help do the same for teaching critical thinking,
or is this a false analogy?

23. We’ll see.

24. Sample
Performance Task:
Crime Reduction

25. [Here the presentation used a combination of handouts and materials displayed on a document camera to examine a sample Performance Task.]

26. [Click on this link and scroll to Section 1:10 (page 33) to see the
Crime Reduction Performance Task
The Performance Task documents cannot be opened. Contact Ellen at
if you would like to examine the documents.]

27. [The presentation then continued as a small-group project
to identify possible Performance Task
topics, tasks, and lists of documents.]

28. Possible Topics: Creating “Green Campus” policies
Creating policies for using technology in middle school classrooms
Proposing a gang intervention program
Designing an employee fitness program
Designing a memorial for a controversial war

29. Crime Reduction Documents:
Investigator’s memo
Newspaper story
Police tables
Government report
State crime statistics
Chart created by the candidate
Abstracts of research articles

30. Other Possible Documents
Research articles
Other academic articles
Personal essays
Editorials, Opinion Columns, Letters to the Editor
Brochures
Web sites
Blogs

31. More Possible Documents
Political speeches
Transcripts of t.v. or radio talk shows
Legislation
Mission statements
Codes of conduct
Advertisements
Press releases

32. And
Posters
Photographs
Works of art
Magazine covers
Etc.

33. [After the groups reported on their topics, tasks, and documents,
each group was asked to choose a document and discuss how a logical fallacy
or other kind of weakness
might be embedded
in the writing of that document.]

34. Common Logical Fallacies
Slippery slope
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Appeal to authority
Ad hominem
Faulty comparison
Red herring
Begging the question

35. More Logical Fallacies
Straw man
Hasty generalization
Poisoning the well
Guilt by association
Biased example
Appeal to emotion
Appeal to fear

36. Also consider using Misleading representations of data Weak evidence
Poorly structured research
Contradictory evidence
Outdated evidence
Emotional manipulation
Obfuscatory writing

37. and other kinds of case studies,
Performance Tasks,
and other kinds of case studies,
require a great deal of work to create,
and ideally
they draw on knowledge from a variety of disciplines.

38. indeed probably demand,
Therefore,
they reward,
indeed probably demand,
collaborative effort,

39. which is, after all,
the Dominican way!

40. Also,
good case studies
can be publishable.

41. Or at the very least
put in the CLA library.

42. If you are interested in working on a case study, please contact me
Jody Cressman or
David Dolence

43. in creating case studies and critical thinking skills!
Thank you
for your interest
in creating case studies
to teach reading
and critical thinking skills!