Problems and Useful Techniques: My Experiences in Teaching Courses in Argumentation, Informal Logic and Critical Thinking

Abstract

There are three levels of courses that I routinely teach that involve informal logic. One is a first-year course called Introduction to Logical Reasoning. The next is a second-year course, Logic. It is open to anyone, but is a (highly recommended) requirement for philosophy majors and honors students. It contains about a fifty-fifty balance between formal and informal logic. The remaining one is a third-year course called Argumentation, which attracts senior students from various disciplines. but often contains quite a few honors philosophy students. It contains little formal logic. My experience is that teaching the latter two courses tends to go well, possibly because the students tend to come from among our better students, and they are well-motivated to learn the subject matter. Teaching the first-year course tends to be more uneven. It can be problematic some years, and can easily go wrong.The reason may be that this course gets many students who are poorly prepared and motivated, and who may drop out during the first term. This course often gets quite a few very good students as well , and the mixture seems to create problems, especially in the first term, until things settle down a bit. What I have been noticing is more of a drift towards a high school atmosphere in this class. Getting some of the students 10 pay attention. or to grasp points that I would have considered very elementary in the past, seems to be a problem. The second year Logic course is very typical, and not much different, I assume from what is taught at many universities. I have no especially innovative techniques used there, except to do plenty of exercises, and build the exams around them. The third year Argumentation course is more unusual. I know several colleagues at other universities who are teaching roughly comparable courses, but I think they are in a small minority. It is comparatively rare to find such a course taught at upper levels in the university curriculum. It is rare to find them taught at the graduate level. It is also extremely rare to see graduate students doing a thesis on a problem in this area (outside ofa few centers, like the Department .ofSpeech