Assignment: 1
Game Plan
As you journey through this unit and are honing your critical thinking skills, you might recognize many ideas identified in the Game Plan. To assist in your critical thinking process, the Game Plan was created to help assist you in making critical decisions through the use of 10 strategies.
This assignment calls for you to complete a table that will focus on a recent experience in your life. Within the table, you will identify your experience, how you reacted to the experience, two game-plan strategies that could have changed your outcome, and what the new outcome might have been.
Make sure you address the components listed below:
- Describe the situation and why it was important to you.
- Describe how you reacted.
- Identify two of the strategies identified in the book, and develop critical thinking questions you would ask yourself as a part of your self-assessment.
- Include bullet points sharing your decision-making process.
- Address the new outcomes/solutions resulting from the integration of these strategies.
Assignment: 2
Becoming a Good Thinker
The goal of this assignment is to progress as a questioner and, therefore, as a thinker. For this assignment, select an important problem faced by society today (e.g., income inequality, gun violence, online privacy), and construct three questions that will result in critical thinking using the assignment template.
In the template, under the first column, provide your own original questions related to your chosen important problem.
In the second column, identify the domain of thinking.
In the third column, list the intellectual standards and element of thought that relates to your question. Briefly explain.
Why the question is important in this context (i.e., the elements of thought or reasoning that led you to this thinking).
Assignment: 3
Decision-Making Table
For this assignment, you will apply analytical reasoning and identify strategies for self-assessment to reconsider your decision-making patterns. You will need to complete a table with four columns to complete this task.
In the first column, you will provide two personal examples where you acted in accordance with one or more of the patterns of irrational or unethical decision-making.
In the second column, you will identify which pattern(s) of irrational or unethical decision-making applies to your situations.
In the third column, you will identify any characteristics of egocentrism or sociocentrism, as well as any pathological tendencies of mind, involved in your thought process.
Finally, in the fourth column, share how you could have applied the keys to sound decision-making to approach the situation more rationally.
Assignment: 4
Article Reframing
For this assignment, you are to choose any article written within the last month, and consider how certain words and tone are utilized to direct your opinion.
In one to three brief paragraphs, identify any biases or fallacies you detect and any words the author uses to impart a certain message. What words or phrases could you replace to change the reader's opinion? APA is not required, but remember to provide the title, date, and source of your chosen article.
Assignment: 5
Table of Dirty Tricks
For this assignment, you will create a table of the most prominent fallacies in thinking.
the name and number of the dirty trick,
the decision-making that would lead someone to employ this trick,
how you would detect it was being used, and
one or two ways in which you might counter the strategy.