Critical Thinking Skill Area

The overall objective is to develop students’ reasoning abilities by incorporating reasoning tasks and practices into general education courses.  Critical thinking objectives for students completing the general education program are:

1. Identify and state arguments.

2. Identify the main point in a passage or essay and state the reasons that support a given choice.

3. Identify assumptions and state the implications of an argument, passage, or theory.

4. Critically evaluate arguments in terms of the strength of evidence and reasoning.

5. Write an essay that comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, supported by relevant evidence, and tested against relevant criteria and standards.