Critical thinking

good morning and welcome to the student hub live well it's the 9th of October and this is the third of our boot camps where we're getting you geared up to start your studies so for many of you your module will have already started and Leon Zaka chatting to all of you in these chat box but let me just explain how this event works if indeed you are new so my name is Karen and I'll be presenting the show today and I have for an incredibly fantastic guests are going to talk you all through the various things you need to know to start your first assignment we're going to take a look at critical thinking we're going to take a look at process and content words in your TMA and then we're going to look at unpacking the team and thinking about what the Assessor wants from you in that assignment and then we're going to take a look at essay writing so we've got a lot of things that will be essential skills for study now we've got a lot of widgets in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen these are interactive tools not the thing that's in a bottle of Guinness and what you do with those is you can press on the widget that applies to you and tell us what you think you might tell us where you are so there's a map and just put on the map where you are you can also tell us what level you're studying and how you're feeling right now now these word cards which is a list of three options um need three things to submit so if you can only think of one or two that's absolutely fine but just put a full-stop and so that we can see your results you can also tell us which subject you're studying and if you've been to a student hublife event before and how you're feeling about starting your module so let us know your thoughts and joining me today in lis and Zack hello Lee and Zack how are you and how is everyone very well thank you how are you thank you looking forward to today's session as everyone out there everyone's really up for this lots of people out there really excited to really want to know some more information about looking sort of critically at their tea mas and looking at assessments in general which we're going to be covering a lot of today as well there's over a hundred and twenty students already online sort of chatting to us so hopefully that'll grow throughout the day as we were given lots of information about some completing their essays and assignments well thank you Matt Lee and Zack as well as being students work and our student support team which is brilliant because they know a lot of tips about where to find things that may be useful study so they'll be putting those links in the chat now I've known from a lot of people that they haven't been able to watch with us today because they're working so I am sorry about that but hopefully you can still get a lot out of these sessions on the catch up and to watch the catch up do you just go to the live stream account which is oh you connections and you can watch the catch up immediately after the event and will also be cutting it's as nice bite-sized sections and putting it on our student hub live YouTube channel after the show but our sessions on essay writing which will end this workshop and all in the evening so hopefully those of you who haven't been able to come in real time can make those evening sessions which I'll explain a little bit more about later okay so our first session is about critical thinking and I'm joined by Paul Francois Chambliss who some of you may know from our freshers event last week now Paul is the heads of departments in religious studies and he's been working on a new second-level module in religious studies called a two to seven exploring religion places practices texts and experiences if you're interested in listening to a session that sir he and Graeme Harvey did then do check that out on the catch up which is from our freshers event that was last week but today Paul you're here to tell us all about critical thinking that's right Karen and I think the most important thing to start with this critical thinking shouldn't be attempted until you've had your morning coffee when you've had your morning coffee then you're ready to start critical thinking well you came in here with your coffee Paul refusing to give us up despite the that the non-compliant mug we've now got your mug and then you start criticizing our biscuits which are actually our station we'd be writing all our things we've been learning in our boot camp combining two of our favorite things stationery and biscuits at the student hub Lodge disappointed that I couldn't do some dunking so poor critical thinking is a really important thing for level two students level three students but in fact many of our students are here today just at level one and it's a really good habit to get into but I think it's one of those most elusive subjects where we all think have I been thinking critically and and am i criticizing the right thing so what is critical thinking okay critical thinking let's begin with what it isn't it isn't just criticizing and it isn't something you might have heard of called critical theory which actually is comes from something called the Frankfurt School a very specific type of critical social theory if you like associated with Marxism it's not that either critical thinking is really about developing your skills it's about reflecting on your own processes of thought and it's about learning to develop skills when you encounter sources of evidence so discriminating between let's say good evidence and not-so-good evidence trustworthy or reliable data and unreliable data in today's parlance that might be real news and fake news for example so it's about developing those kinds of skills and part of that as I said at the beginning is it's about reflection on on one's own thought so growing up in in this country in the 20 20 21st century I'm a white middle-class middle-aged male obviously I've got habits of thought that are part of who I am and how I've been socialized and how I've been educated so it's learning to become aware of those kinds of habits that are associated with my upbringing my gender and my age and so forth and learning to try and overcome those or at least spot the biases and distortions that may be there and then learning to get past that and use my reason in a way that is productive rather than allowing my judgment to be clouded by different kinds of let's say ideological distortion or bias we'd like you to fill in and just critical thinking mean criticizing and you might have guessed the answer to that already but do let us know what you think and also why is doubt as important as reason something will pick up on later is it all black and whites I mean that's quite a categorical answer so we've got some decisions there to make which is yes no or it's very great and why use critical thinking outside of the university but I'm really interested in this idea because it sounds really difficult but you've written something here in terms of our preparation which is this idea about learning and you were saying you know if you memorize a solution to a problem you can memorize that and critical thinking is really about sort of taking something and combining it with other things and then applying it to something new which i think is a fantastic way of looking at it because that's what learning is absolutely right it's just critical thinking is about developing a sort of panoply of skills that you can take from one situation and apply to lots of other different situations in that example I said you can memorize a solution to a problem but then you've only memorized a solution to that problem you can't transfer that what you've memorized elsewhere so critical thinking is about learning some skills relevant to one studies about using evidence using evidence in a way to support an argument using evidence in a way to maybe establish or evaluate somebody else's argument maybe spoke weaknesses in that argument and then learning that actually that's those skills are really useful in a range of contexts when you're reading a newspaper when you're watching television when you're studying you might be doing one module you might be doing a combined degree with different with different elements to it maybe history as well element and religious studies blow my own trumpet briefly is the other but the skills you learn the critical thinking skills you learn will be applicable in both subjects because they're both about evidence weighing up evidence balancing for carefully critically assessing and then reaching a conclusion based on an evidence based document so really it's about thinking we've got a lot of skills that we've already you know generated in life for example how do I get a coffee in the studio how do I get some biscuits for example but but our students you know especially students how much coaching this somewhat later can often think I don't know how to do this thinking critically it sound really really hard but actually they've been having very complex negotiation with their children about going to bed on time they might have been working out how they can fit their study into life and again like you say when you start studying you read newspapers in different ways and last week we were talking about freshers and saying you know all of these headlines and papers saying a glass of wine is is really good for you et cetera how do we evaluate that and think about you know where that source of evidence comes from and to what extent that really is an accurate reflection of that claim so what you're saying really is to think about how we can sort of take some of these skills that we've already learnt in everyday life how do I tell whether someone's telling the truth for example about whether or not they from they've taken my pencil or my biscuit how do we evaluate that and transfer that to a learning environment and that's really where I want to go next because I think when we sort of start making those steps it's a little bit easier to sort of see how we might make those links but how appropriate are they really I think when we're when we're doing our studies we use as you say we're using the same kinds of skills that we've used in work situations in family situations we're using our reason but we're also using a skepticism we don't always believe everything we hear and sometimes we need to reflect on why we're more likely to be skeptical of some sources than others are more likely to trust some sources than others but skepticism healthy skepticism is good we can also practice it not only as something personal and individual reason and doubt or skepticism are also useful public tools so when we discuss with our student peers when we discuss with their friends and family we're using our reason and skepticism publicly and we can learn from what other peoples from other people's perspectives too to moderate and I don't mean by moderate as in cleave to some middle path what I mean is recognize that different points of view can often mean seeing the same question from different perspectives and seeing the same data from different perspectives actually helps you realise that the world is more important answers or the world around us is more ambiguous and more complicated than we might have begun in our investigation so you know it's a complex world out there studies are complex we have to accept and embrace that complexity and not be intimidated by it and and not be intimidated when our reason doesn't seem to lead us to a true answer or a correct answer but maybe because you know in particularly in social sciences and humanities truth isn't really something but you're right though because you know what is truth is a very contested idea what is evidence and what counts as evidence the things that we grapple with all the time and once we start to make those sort of connections really and think actually it doesn't have to mean just because some scientists have done this on a laboratory of rats doesn't mean it has to apply to a human population you know where is their evidence and to what extent can we sort of use it yeah can it be generalized to others that's right I mean the the the hallmark of science is really that its conclusions are always tentative there's always the sense that more more research is required you know in order to derive to open out the question further to open out that complexity this they're back to this point because I think often when I'm encouraged in particular level to students and particularly in science to think critically they might start saying okay oh yes the laboratory experiment lack psychological validity that's my critical evaluation of this and it's very easy to sort of revert to that sort of criticizing of things because one thing can't say everything categorically evidence is always contextualized isn't it so it's difficult but you're encouraging students to think about their own systematic way of doing things and and you've got some ideas about how they can start thinking about maybe what's working for them in terms of this more linear approach to how they think and then what sort of techniques they can use to get out of their kit when they're starting to evaluate something it's important to recognize the roller thing of creativity and imagination okay so it's not you're not just following a linear path question evaluation answer curiosity and imagination are a big part of addressing questions TMA questions bigger questions you know or even just you know what do I think about this particular story on the front page of the newspaper today so I really think it's important to try and imagine yourself as cultivating a sort of autonomy as a learner okay learning how to learn become intellectual autonomy is all about our end goal at the Open University which is about creating communities of people who've got we've got a level of critical and intellectual acumen in order to to address the complex problems that our world faces today you know for me the biggest problem the world faces is climate change I think that's an enormous ly complex problem for societies to address systematically and and and we need we need the new generations of thinkers from this university and from the other universities around the country to really get to grips with that and its deep implications for whether we drive to work in the future or what kinds of cars were going to do that in if at all and all sorts of questions about the use of energy and so forth okay well we asked our audience what use of critical thinking outside the university and we'll come to that in a minute to see what answers so if you haven't already let us know so you fill in that word till you can put three things in there so what use is critical thinking outside the university and also how are you feeling right now we're going to bring those up in just a second but Lee and Zak how is this making sense to everyone at home well it's making quite a lot of sense a number of students have sort of been talking about how they sort of critically analyze news stories and how they look at that and a few students have said you know they believe that critical thinking skills are more important than ever at the moment particularly with the wide range of new sources that there are there's not just like we know the mainstream media's newspapers and television there's also social media as well and they're really sort of important sources these days but of course you have to look at them quite critically because they can be published by anyone anywhere you know I'd say I'd say so a lot of a lot of discussion about people's biases and and and and being able to like you go back to it so it's the process of reflecting on the way that you think about you know either a challenge or a subject or a question and just being able to break down and make sure that you can you know you get incredible sources of information it's a really good discussion from from everyone really on there so far I mean I think that the point about media is absolutely spot-on there's a lot of different media sources out there telling us lots of different things about you know all the different issues that we face right now I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention what they are I've already mentioned climate change Rex it wrecks it for example I just go straight there lots of different media sources saying very different things about the consequences and how does one balance that and it's the same when you're doing your assignment you were given different sources of evidence you have to evaluate those sources weigh up those different sources assess their credibility and make some conclusions based on that word we had a brilliant session the other week with the library about fake news and I know it's a very hot topic and they gave us these um prompt frameworks and different ways of looking and breaking things down and I think those can be quite useful I mean people seem to be talking about I mean ontology and epistemology which are big words are sort of like small things actually they're big things in terms of you know how we view knowledge as being generated and also how we view people you know are people just a number or are they the massive you know thing that's worth investigating in terms of all these subtle differences I know you probably argue the latter but some you know these whole ways of looking at things are important in terms of how we break things down so what can you say to students about how they might take some of these frameworks or ideas and start thinking about things because sometimes things can just be too big like climate change for example what sort of ways might they start breaking things down to think actually okay what is this saying and to what extent does this knowledge actually hold so the prompt criteria are really useful we use them in in our modules as well a three three two and A two two seven and they're really good for encouraging the student to look at the provenance of a source and assess its credibility so for example we let's say you're doing a tea MA and you've got four or five sources that you've found and ones from an academic journal ones from Twitter or a link through Twitter to a blog or something one's a book but maybe it's a popular science book and maybe another is maybe an older book but by an established academic so you've got for quite different sources some may be different differing academic credibility some from times they might be older or newer so the data they're using might have different reliability or validity so these are the kinds of issues that you need to look for and obviously those questions are different if you're as philosophy student you know just because the source is old doesn't make it unreliable whereas if you're in a stem subject you're probably just going to be mainly interested in new journal articles as your primary sources because the the datasets change so rapidly in STEM subjects so you need to think about the subject you're in as well because the kinds of the relevance of provenance and the prompt criteria changes whether Europe as I say whether you're a philosophy student or in wells or something like that I want to pick up on that subject back on bias but let's just see what everyone said let's first see how everyone's feeling right now on this lovely Monday morning so let's take a look and see what you said in terms of how you're feeling excited motivation good tired new be great awake waiting to start optimistic some lovely words birthday whose birthday is it today eager to learn ready to learn hopeful sleepy enthusiastic unprepared tired okay lots of really good words anxious cranky scared okay so lots of good words and some some negative words if there's anything there that we can help birth if you're feeling anxious about something because you don't know the answer LeAnn's I know pretty much everything so ask them and if they don't know they'll find someone who does and we can email you backup email lists didn't have it opened AC UK so any questions that you would like to ask us then please please do and we will get back to you you mentioned bias and Zack said people in the chat we're talking about bias and you were saying philosophy students might approach things differently sometimes people go off and that particular level two or three they might be using these different sources but they might also have sources in the module like a case study or a clinical study they might be looking at a survey and so they might have all this evidence and they're sorta starting to think about it in their essay now you mentioned bias and sometimes I think all this empirical study that must be a lot more robust than this case study here which I think there's Willie doesn't release a huge amount so how can people use bias to sort of make sense of their evidence and and recognize as well that we do have these biases depending on what we've learnt already and also there will be biases in the subject in terms of what we value is worth thinking about so one of the things to think about is the way a question actually frames the answer so a question is never innocent or neutral it it may be intended to be innocent in neutral there may not be nothing at there may be no question mark to raise against the sincerity of the person or or discipline asking the question but nevertheless questions can produce particular kinds of responses so one has to think very carefully about how one's questions are setting things up in advance there's a great I did all I did my fieldwork when I was doing my PhD in the Philippines there's a historian of the Philippines and in the back of it one of his books he's got an interview that he conducted with a Filipino religious leader and what's what's interesting for me about that interview is the the American historian is asking relentlessly factual questions which is all good he clearly knows his subject matter he's clearly trying to you know draw out the empirical you know the really granular nitty-gritty of what was going on that this this particular man had been involved in in his younger days some of the guys are answers address those empirical factual questions but some of them lead towards more mystical other kinds of ideas other kinds of reasons why certain things might have happened one of the things he talks about is being haunted by the ghost of a particular person important in Filipino history and those answers never get explored by the Filipino by the American historian so what was interesting to me about that interview is what the American historian was after on what he was getting was this clear mismatch and he never explores that data but just relentlessly keeps asking about what happened in 1928 or whatever it was and so when you're when you're trying to ask a question it's always important to listen very carefully to the answers you get and not just stick to your script because there might be some really interesting stuff that you're not responding to that you need to explore okay well let's see what people said about what some youth critical thinking is outside the university so we're going to take a look at that widget and the other widget is it is it all black and white well it's Rachel why it's birthday today so this is not advice on that Rachel but happy birthday and but also let us know your thoughts on that let's take a look though at our word plaid AB what use is critical thinking outside the university okay so lots of really good things here I'm credibility of news tackling challenges get to the truth curiosity and select understanding building on knowledge reflecting thoughtful so there's lots and lots of accent yeah absolutely good habit so a lot of people seem to be into this idea Paul that that you know these skills are going to be sort of good life skills and in particular what you were saying about fake news and being able to interpret things in that sort of way I think they're going to be really useful in the workplace because you know if you've got a decision to make in the workplace about a product or or you know you've got to import a meeting to make decisions about strategic direction of the company you're in but all those kinds of decisions are evidence-based decisions and you need to as it were think critically you know and reflect on your own your own opinions your own feelings but also look at the evidence make sure you've got really rigorous evidence and you believe in its reliability and then you can make a decision or make a recommendation to you know to the the committee or the or the group that you're part of but that is that is using that critical those critical skills that you've learned in university that have been there all along and you as a part of your life skills but you've refined them in the here at the oh you and then you're using them again you know in a leave a more refined way further down the line so we've got the hang of sort of looking at newspaper articles and saying is this fake news is it not what is the source of this and does that make sense and you know what if you left out we can do that that's easy it's evident that people are doing that now but it can be a bit more complex when something is um in a glassy bound module material where you think actually these people know what they're on about this is the Open University and they've given me this book how can I start thinking critically about that so what might do you encourage students to sort of bear in mind as they're maybe reading there module material or thinking about what to put in an assignment oh gosh you're putting me on the spot now so one of the things that happens when you've got your module material is yes you're you're thinking you're immediately as it were deferring to the authority of the module material there's nothing wrong with that but at the same time you need to recognize that those materials are written a specific time and that knowledge didn't stop when they were published people have conducted further research and the important thing to do is always to be aware that there is further research then the module materials and the module website will probably have pointers to research that's being conducted since the module materials are written that's ongoing have a look at that where where appropriate and wherever where relevant because that is ensuring that you are up-to-date and you're taking those module materials and asking questions of them with the new research that's taking place right now so we're going to look later it's sort of breaking down your questions for your assignments and when it's appropriate to go off piece and when it's not and you know some people will be thinking about these things and there might be all sorts of burning questions I've had many students say I often go off track and I often am interested in this that and the other so how can we sort of rein some of this in about thinking critically and thinking okay this piece of evidence is written in a given time in a given place these things matter to this discipline for example or the sort of subject area right now so we can't sort of unpack everything we don't want to overwhelm students by thinking there's so much here that's missed because there is because it's a limited thing that's it's like looking at a fruit bowl and we're saying this is an apple and it might be surrounded by lots of other things but if we're just looking at the apple wood looking at the Apple so how might we sort of frame this so that people don't feel like they've got to go off to the library and and do all this other research and work around some of these complex subjects okay so that's a really important point critical thinking is not something you're going to it's not just a set of skill that you can learn and then accomplish instantly it's something that you're cultivating through your through the different levels through your different modules so that when you finish your degree when you finish your qualification you can take that skill set and apply elsewhere and as you move through your degree the amount of independent study that your that is expected of you grows so let's say it's ten fifteen percent a level one it may be thirty forty percent at level three and you've got that progression of expectation that you're developing that intellectual autonomy through your studies and that's what this is about so don't overwhelm yourself now and think ah I heard what they talked about and now I need to to about critical thinking and now I need to go to the library and read all this more up-to-date stuff because I don't trust my module but it was no that's not what we said what we said was this is a skill that you're slowly developing through your modules take a time learn from that from the feedback from your tutor enjoy your core enjoy your studies really important that you enjoy it and see this is something that's taking time to grow through your work yeah absolutely and and you know there are stages at which you develop all of these things you know the essays do become more challenging and complex and inadvertently by just doing compare and contrast and evaluating and all these sort of more complex things you do build those skills quite naturally sometimes you just like have an epiphany moment you think of course you know and that might be this year next year or the year after doesn't matter when it happens but and you probably have several of those moments in fact and that's like oh but that's that's what makes it fun yes and you know you you get that realization that sense of oh I really am growing and I I'm changing as a result of this and that can and that's a really positive feeling a really positive experience thanks Paul well that's been a really really interesting session and we're out of time as ever it always goes too quickly but that's given us some really good food for thought and and I think you've really reassured our audience as well that whilst they can start thinking about these things and they do indeed have these skills that they can now transfer to their learning it doesn't have to be you know a very arduous task we can grow nicely and organically with it actually thanks for coming along today Cheers Karen right we're going to show you a short video of the campus so if you've seen this before and you've been to an event before go and grab a cup of tea or go and find your assignment now we're going to take a look at your assignments and we're going to think about process and content words in your tea MA and then the next session is going to take a look at the guidance so if you haven't already tracked down your assessment why don't you see if you can find that now so that you can start applying some of the things that going to talk about in our next two sessions to your first piece of work see you in a few minutes for our next session [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Student Hub Live

Views: 3,289

Rating: 4.9111109 out of 5

Keywords: Student Hub Live, SHL, Open University, Education, Student, Paul-Francois Tremlett, Karen Foley, Critical Thinking

Id: erBboKtMYig

Length: 29min 52sec (1792 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2017