Thinking it Through
a critical thinking master-class for high-performing students aged 11 - 14 years
Course Tutors: Coral Milburn-Curtis, MSc (Oxon); Jen Oakton MA; Emma Park MSt (Oxon)
Dates: 30th July – 2nd August 2012
No. of places: 50
Venue: online, on our learning platform
Fees: £90 per student
What is a critical thinking master-class?
A critical thinking master-class is a four-day online course, led by a university professional and provided for able young people who enjoy an intellectual challenge in the company of other able learners. It is a tutorial based course, which means that students interact with real people (tutors and other students on the course), rather than with computers.
Critical thinking develops the learner’s skills in inference, deduction, debate and argument and is an advanced learning tool for students who want to develop their argument skills in essay writing. Critical thinking also raises the student’s credibility as a speaker and improves their metacognitive thinking (self-regulation of learning).
The course provides learners with ways of thinking that can be applied across a variety of situations and disciplines, as they become increasingly higher-order thinkers. These skills are particularly relevant for the development of advanced essay writing.
The Level 3 Critical Thinking course uses innovative interactive approaches to teach learners to evaluate hypotheses, develop balanced, precise arguments and present opinions or conclusions based upon synthesised evidence. Students are taught to infer and deduce from a premise to a conclusion and to ‘read between the lines’ within complex text. Finally, the course places emphasis on self-evaluation and reflection, in order to develop students’ metacognitive awareness (self-regulation of learning). It develops the dynamic aspects of metacognition: monitoring, evaluating and self-regulating the learning process.
By the end of this course, participants will be able to recognise weak and strong argument and will be in a position to employ advanced critical thinking across a variety of academic subjects. The principal focus is on the development of logical argument, reasoning and debate. It uses age-adjusted material from the As Level syllabus. During the course students have the opportunity to interact in intellectual discussion with professionals from The University of Warwick and The University of Oxford.
What is the benefit to the student?
The aim of all of our courses is to develop learners’ metacognition, a higher-order thinking attribute of able and high-performing learners. A child with a high metacognitive awareness is able to take charge of their own learning; to self-motivate; self-regulate; set and achieve intellectual goals; learn independently; compartmentalise and structure their learning.
Research has established that students with high levels of metacognitive awareness are more likely to achieve at all educational levels and beyond. This is not specifically taught in schools, but is developed by improving the learner’s thinking skills.
We achieve this by structuring all courses around a framework designed to incrementally develop thinking skills, moving the learner from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking as the course progresses.
What happens on the course?
Students begin by logging into the learning platform (www.olpoxford.org/learningplatform) with their unique username and password. This is where they access the course, once they are enrolled on it. Before the course starts, there are induction activities available to assist the students in familiarising themselves with the workings of the learning platform.
Each day during the course, at 9am, a new unit of activity appears. Each unit contains a mixture of:
- Short writing or research activities (one or two paragraphs per day). These are assessed towards the student’s overall grade and are the only compulsory element of the course.
- ‘Learning quizzes’ which are interactive activities which cover the content of the course. These activities are not assessed.
- Group discussions on course-related topics. Whilst these are neither compulsory nor assessed, they are an important learning tool and students are encouraged to participate in group discussion as much as possible, so that they can benefit from sharing experiences with other able students from around the world. There is an opportunity for discussion every day
Once opened, each topic unit remains open for the duration of the course, for those participants who need to catch up because of days out, family commitments etc.
Feedback
Individual tutor feedback is given for the main writing activities and parents are notified when feedback becomes available, (by email, to the address used when the child is registered on the learning platform). Feedback remains available after the course has finished.
How do parents know how much their child has improved over the course?
If parents sign a consent form, which is in the introductory unit of each course, giving the tutor permission to inspect the evaluation data, then a measure of the improvement in the child’s intellectual confidence over the duration of the course, is made available.
Certificates
Certificates and a Record of Achievement are awarded at the end of the course and are sent to the parents at the registered home address. The certificate details the child’s level of achievement (Pass, Merit or Distinction). That final grade is derived from an average of the marks for each of the main writing activities and a tutor-awarded grade which reflects the child’s level of contribution to the collaborative element of the course. The Record of Achievement details the activities on the course and the level at which the child has been working. It is a useful document to include in school appeals and scholarship applications.
Safety
We work within a closed learning platform and only those who have registered on the course have access to it. However, one of our aims is to help students to adopt safe internet practice not only whilst students are with us, but when they venture onto the internet at other times too. Therefore, we have strict safety rules which are designed to develop safe online practice. All learning platform activity is monitored by CRB-checked moderators at all times.
Our expectations
This is an advanced course, for able students, so we have high expectations of our students. We encourage them to present their work with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation and to take every opportunity to improve their vocabulary by making use of a thesaurus, particularly when engaged in the daily writing task, which is the only activity which is assessed.
This is an exciting opportunity for young learners to share knowledge and experience in a supportive community of like-minded students and academics, so we do take the opportunity to generate new knowledge, by encouraging discussion at an appropriate level for the age group. We particularly appreciate students who respond encouragingly to each other. This helps to build a collaborative community in which everyone can feel supported.
Eligibility
This course is suitable for learners aged 11 - 14 years, who enjoy an intellectual challenge. This is an advanced course for young learners who already have some skills in critical thinking (for instance, those students who have already completed the course ‘Is this the right room for an argument?’)
Contact name: Coral Milburn-Curtis; coral.milburn-curtis@education.ox.ac.uk
