Creative Thinking & Critical Thinking: A Multimedia Approach
Course Objectives
In this course, we will analyze creative and persuasive texts (including commercials, advertisements, and passages from newspapers, essays, etc.); you will learn how to:
think more creatively about problem-solving
and think more critically about others’ arguments as well as your own.
Texts
A course packet: excerpts from Chesla (1999), De Bono (1970), and Zhang (2010, 2011).
40 video clips (10 on creative thinking and 30 on critical thinking).
Course Requirements and Grades
l Coursework, 70%:
1. Creative thinking exercise, 10%;
2. Group report on problem solving (groups of three: student 1 responsible for the notes on group brainstorming, student 2 for the first draft on different pathways, student 3 for the final report on the best ideas), 15%;
3. Quiz on creative thinking (in-class), 10%
4. Two SES (statement, elaboration, and specifics) exercises (200 words each) on critical thinking, 10% each
5. Quiz on critical thinking (in-class), 10%
6. Fallacies in the media (homework), 5%
l Final exam, 20%.
l Group discussion and active class participation, 10%
Tentative Schedule
Week
1. Diagnostic test and introduction.
2. Creative strategies (I): brainstorming, means-ends analysis, left-brain and right-brain, utilizing different senses (creative thinking exercise)
3. Characteristics of creative thinking: lateral thinking vs. vertical thinking, a questioning attitude, associative powers, fluency, flexibility, and originality
4. Creative strategies (II): changing the entry point, the reversal method, track switching (group report on problem solving)
5. Perceptual blocks to creativity: The three S’s: stereotype, self-imposed limits, saturation
6. Creative strategies (III): checklist for new ideas, attribute listing, exposure and random word stimulation (quiz on creative thinking)
7. Critical thinking: logos, ethos, pathos, needs analysis
8. Fallacious appeals to emotion: appeal to pity, cuteness, fear, popular sentiments (SES exercise 1)
9. Fallacies about People: ad hominem, appeal to authority, bandwagon, good intentions, tokenism, two wrongs make a right
10. Fallacies about arguments (I): complex question, conflation of morality with legality, false dilemma, loaded question, non sequitur, oversimplification, post hoc, red herring, slippery slope, straw man, suppressed evidence
11. Fallacies about arguments (II): accident, appeal to ignorance, appeal to novelty, appeal to tradition, begging the question, chicken or egg dilemma, composition, division, inconsistency, inversion of cause and effect, mistaking correlation for cause, perfectionist, provincialism, self-sealing, water is wet (SES exercise 2)
12. Fallacies about analogy: illustrative analogy vs. faulty analogy
13. Fallacies in induction and deduction: argument in a circle, biased generalization, equivocation, hasty generalization, questionable premise, shared characteristic, trivial objection, unjustified value judgment
14. Statistics and ambiguities: enhancing a statistic, faulty comparison, homemade statistics, unfinished claim, weasel claim (quiz on critical thinking)
15. Review
16. Final exam
References
Adams, James L. Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas. 4th ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001.
Bowell, Tracy and Gary Kemp. Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide. London: Routledge, 2002.
Chesla, Elizabeth L. Critical Thinking and Logic Skills for College Students. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.
De Bono, Edward. Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity. London: Ward Lock Educational, 1970.
Halpern, Dian F. Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984.
Zhang, Zaixin. English Composition: From Creative Thinking to Critical Thinking. Book 1: Creative Thinking and Prewriting. Beijing: FLTRP, 2010.
Zhang, Zaixin. English Composition: From Creative Thinking to Critical Thinking. Book 4: Critical Thinking and Argumentation. Beijing: FLTRP, 2011.
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