The final project of this class is designed to assess the extent to which each student has met the course objectives stated in the syllabus. It has three parts, testing the students’ (i) understanding of the key concepts/theories covered in this class and ability to assess their own personal growth as a critical thinker in those terms, (ii) ability to use the methods and rules learned in this class to conduct independent research to deepen or revise their understanding of a socially important issue on the basis of well-sourced, expertly collected data, and (iii) ability to use the skills learned in this class to expand the critical thinking ecosystem around them.
PART I. What does it take to be an ideal critical thinker in the current society?
(1) Write an essay-style response to the above question. Your response should coherently weave together most of the key concepts, theories, and observations encountered in this class, including at least the ones listed below.
Do not just give generic statements. Rather, your concepts should be well-defined, and you should use specific and credible sources to back up your claims.
Your imaginary audience is another college student or college-educated person. You can think of your response as the description of an ideal that is worth pursuing and that is accessible but takes constant effort and hard work to approximate. It should contain reflections on both obstacles to and opportunities for critical thinking that an individual can expect to encounter in our current society.
- Rationality (what does it mean to be “rational” given the heuristics & biases studies?)
- Heuristics & biases (with specific examples)
- Agency (what does it mean to be a truly independent thinker?)
- Self-knowledge
- Dunning-Krugger effect (alternatively called illusion of knowledge/understanding; for further information see here.)
- Analysis & assessment of thoughts and reasonings
- Data-driven decision making
- Credulity and science communication
- Mis-information, fake news, and dis-information campaigns
(2) Revisit the worksheet that you did on day one (Assignment 1 on Canvas). Give a personalized narrative of your growth as a critical thinker during this semester, in terms of both theoretical understanding and practical skills. Did you meet your own expectations? Is there still room for further improvement? Please be specific.
(3) Based on this personal experience of growth as well as the ideal described in 1.1, design an actionable plan for helping others around you to become better thinkers. Imagine yourself as a thinking “coach.” Be mindful that you will for certain encounter various challenges and even resistance whenever you work with other human beings. You may find it helpful to design the plan with a focus group in mind, which mainly include individuals who you expect to have personal or professional relations with in the near future. You may also find it helpful to consider the power dynamics in such relations, so as to be strategic in your approach.
Your completed work on this part should include all the parts underlined above. Please limit it to 4 pages, single space.
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PART II. Find an issue of social consequence that calls for judgments and responses that are based on objective evidence collected by qualified experts. It should be an issue that you more or less care about, but one that is not in your area of expertise and that we have not discussed extensively as a group in this class. You have some yet to be scrutinized opinions/assumptions about it, which may be implicit in how you talk about it (or would talk about it if asked). Take the following steps to figure out whether these opinions/assumptions fall in the category of inert information, activated ignorance, or activated knowledge (or a mixture of these).
- Step 1: briefly explain why you think the chosen issue is important. Then write down what immediately comes to your mind if you are asked about the nature of the issue in question and how we should address it. Although you should not overthink this part, what you write down should be specific enough for you to check against concrete evidence.
- Step 2: do some research about the issue, to find out whether your previously stated views are backed up by evidence. Describe your research methods—by, for instance, listing the various search terms you tried (in the order in which you used them), the kinds of sources you came across, and how you determined their credibility or lack thereof.
- Step 3: summarize the main results of your research. This summary should include at least data and graphsselected from credible sources (specify these sources). If you are able, you may generate your own graphs from the given data.
- Step 4: revisit step 1 and assess your initial views: do they fall in the category of inert information, activated ignorance, or activated knowledge (or a mixture of these)? Would you update or refine your views? Be specific.
Your completed work on this part should include all the components underlined above.
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PART III. Practice expanding the ecosystem of critical thinkers around you, a second try. Your general takeaway from working on Projects II & III was that it can be extremely difficult, while important, to make such a practice effective and that this calls for strategic design and creative responses/adaptations as well as tenacity. Now let’s give the exercise another run, following these steps:
- Choose a topic—either a version of the one you chose for PART II or poverty or climate change. For the latter two topics, you can use and add to the resources already included on our course website. If you already used climate change for a previous project, pick a different one this time.
- Design a relatively short and simple questionnaire that you will use to survey people’s (i) self-perception of open-mindedness, (ii) self-report of critical thinking skills, and (iii) knowledge about the chosen topic and opinion about its importance or lack thereof. When designing the questionnaire, take care to avoid statistical biases as much as you can, although you may not be able to conduct the survey with total anonymity this time.
- Conduct this survey with people from your peer group, be they at Georgetown or elsewhere. Ask them not to overthink the questions.
- Choose two surveys that suggest the respondents need to think more critically about the topic in question. (Include a summary of the survey results with your report, wherever you find fit to insert it.) Use data, graphs, and other relevant materials you have, design a plan that you can use to approach them—separately, to avoid unnecessary peer pressure—and help them do so.
- Implement the plan, and take notes of what happens in each case.
- Organize these notes into a coherent narrative. Refer to your two subjects as subject 1 and subject 2, and describe each in terms of their year in college and major.
- Conclude with a brief reflection on your takeaways from this exercise.
Your completed work on this part should include all the components underlined above as well as an introduction, where you specify the chosen topic with a quick explanation of your choice and a sketch of the ensuing steps.