Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in Communications Courses

This workshop provides participants with concrete tools for teaching critical thinking skills in Communications courses. The workshop targets critical thinking skills in courses that emphasize reading, writing, and oral presentation. By the end of the workshop, participants are able to help students create better drafts, organize speeches, analyze the written word, and write complete argumentative and research papers. All skills will be contextualized around critical thinking.

By the end of this workshop, participants know or are able to: 

• Apply precise pedagogical methods that help students at any level improve their critical thinking skills.
• Apply precise pedagogical methods to improve writing skills based on critical thinking practices.
• Create critical thinking rubrics. 

Activities: 

• Participate in exercises designed and proven to enhance critical thinking.
• Create exercises and exams that enhance and measure critical thinking skills.
• Use and create rubrics that provide viable measurements of critical thinking.

Participants can claim a digital badge and certificate upon completing the workshop and a post-workshop survey.

About the Facilitator

Dr. John Eigenauer is a professor of philosophy at Taft College. He holds a master’s degree in English, a master’s degree in humanities, and a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies from Syracuse University, where he was the recipient of the prestigious Syracuse University Fellowship. Dr. Eigenauer has taught philosophy, English, mathematics, computer science, physics, and Spanish. He has delivered workshops nationally and internationally on the pedagogy of critical thinking and published articles on critical thinking and rationality. His most recent article, “The Problem With the Problem of Human Rationality,” published in the International Journal of Educational Reform, was highlighted in Psychology Today. Other publications of Dr. Eigenauer’s have appeared in The Historian, The Harvard Theological Review, History of Intellectual Culture, Inquiry: Critical Thinking across the Disciplines, The Rational Alternative, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Huntington Library Quarterly, Innovation Abstracts, and The NISOD Papers.