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Author: Zaid Ali Alsagoff
e-Learning Manager, INCEIF
E-Mail:zaid.alsagoff@gmail.com
Blog:http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/
Article URL:http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/03/coaching-critical-thinking-to-think.html
“We want the development of modal insan (model citizen),students who can
think critically
and
creatively
, who are ableto
solve problems
and have the
ability to adapt
themselves toan ever-changing global environment.”
Blueprint for Education Development, Malaysia (2006 – 2010)
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ONCE UPON A TIME …
A long time ago (early 2007) in a galaxy far away (Malaysia), there was a little boy (33 years old) whohappened to be me. This little boy was suddenly entrusted to transform a dying course at the Universityentitled ‘
Critical Thinking
’. Here I was leading a Learning and Teaching Unit (in the Quality Assurancedepartment) facilitating change and improvements to our e-learning approach, and managing a Universitywide ‘Thinking Skills Infusion Programme’ (TSIP). Although, I had trained many lecturers, seniorlecturers and professors in using technology to facilitate learning, I had ironically never had any realexperience in managing an actual course at the University.Now, one of the leaders from our academic world figured rightly out that perhaps I needed some realexperience to understand what it is like to be a lecturer, before having the right to lecture to lecturers onhow to teach and facilitate effective learning (which makes perfect sense!). Also, since I had beenmanaging the TSIP programme for over six (6) months, the “Critical Thinking’ course would be theperfect challenge and opportunity to test all my untested theories and suggestions on effective learning.In a nutshell, I was asked
to lead and transform the ‘Critical Thinking’ course
, which is arequirement for all undergraduate students.
THE UNITAR WAY!
Although, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR) is currently becoming a more conventional University,it used to adopt a blended learning model, which usually included courseware, online forums, onlinetutorials (OLT), and Face-to-Face (F2F) tutorials. Every course is led by a course leader supported bytutors who facilitate their own sections. The course leader is responsible for guiding the tutors, andpreparing the course plan, course materials, assignments, quizzes and exams. In addition, the courseleader is responsible for correcting the final exams (40% - 50% of the course assessment evaluation), andgiving the students’ final grade for all sections. The tutor’s role is to communicate with the course leader,facilitate the course for their section(s), and grade the coursework (50% - 60%).
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COURSE REENGINEERING NEEDED?
Based on my initial unscientific findings, students found the course difficult to understand and the overallstudents’ satisfaction rates were lower than in other courses for the undergraduate level. In addition, bothstudents and tutors complained that the lecture notes were not sufficient.Although, the past course leaders seemed to have a done a good job facilitating their own sections, theyfailed based on my understanding to communicate and facilitate consistent quality to all the sections.Overall, students and tutors seemed frustrated with ‘Critical Thinking’, and some even questioned therelevance of this course. They argued that this course
focused too much on theory and memorization
,and failed to actually help students develop fundamental thinking, reasoning and language abilities thatare needed for academic success.Although, UNITAR had developed a reasonably good page tuning critical thinking courseware, theexisting curriculum of the critical thinking course seemed to be mostly (80-90%) based on
JohnChaffe’s famous book “
Thinking Critically
”
(6th Edition, 2000). Even the course objectives and topicoutline seemed to be paraphrased out of the book. As UNITAR’s self-developed courseware wasstructured very differently from the course outline, it was hardly reflected or used by either the educators,or the students.So, I began to read John Chaffe’s famous book “Thinking Critically” to get better feel of what thestudents were learning. Strangely, I kept on falling asleep while reading this book, and although thecontent is relevant and useful, the writing style and design of that book (I suppose the later versions aremore engaging!) did not appeal or inspire my thinking mind. So, if I am falling asleep reading this book,what about the students?In addition to this book, the course also recommended students to read another book entitled ‘
CriticalThinking: A Student's Introduction
’ (G. Bassham & Co., 2007). So, I explored the book, and found itmore activity-oriented, engaging, and inspiring. However, I still felt that something was missing to spark the ‘Critical Thinking’ course to life.So, I explored our ‘Critical Thinking’ courseware again, and was actually positively surprised with thequality of the content. However, since it was structured very differently from the course outline and it didnot have a search function, naturally students found it quite frustrating to use.
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