William Koch’s Profile

Do you teach Critical Thinking without a textbook? Or do you teach Critical Thinking and currently use a textbook but would like to switch to Open Educational Resources? Either way, this site is for you. This website was created as an OER (Open Educational Resource) for the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s CRT 100: Critical Thinking course. Although CRT 100 instructors are free to select any topics and instructional materials, they should prioritize teaching the skills listed in the student learning outcomes. Accordingly, the content of this course hub has been divided into suggested “topics.” Each topic has a dedicated page with multiple posts, which include assignments, activities, PowerPoints, and other relevant materials. The “essays” section includes essay assignments and relevant resources. The “resources” section provides external links to other materials. For contributions to the site, go to “contribute.” Thank you to all Academic Literacy and Linguistics faculty who’ve already contributed materials to this site. This site is part of a broader effort to encourage openness and collaboration among instructors. This site is administered by Prof. Ewa Barnes, Lecturer at the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Academic Literacy and Linguistics Department. Feel free to contact me with any resources, comments and questions at ebarnes@bmcc.cuny.edu.

Do you teach Critical Thinking without a textbook? Or do you teach Critical Thinking and currently use a textbook but would like to switch to Open Educational Resources? Either way, this site is for you. This website was created as an OER (Open Educational Resource) for the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s CRT 100: Critical Thinking course. Although CRT 100 instructors are free to select any topics and instructional materials, they should prioritize teaching the skills listed in the student learning outcomes. Accordingly, the content of this course hub has been divided into suggested “topics.” Each topic has a dedicated page with multiple posts, which include assignments, activities, PowerPoints, and other relevant materials. The “essays” section includes essay assignments and relevant resources. The “resources” section provides external links to other materials. For contributions to the site, go to “contribute.” Thank you to all Academic Literacy and Linguistics faculty who’ve already contributed materials to this site. This site is part of a broader effort to encourage openness and collaboration among instructors. This site is administered by Prof. Ewa Barnes, Lecturer at the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Academic Literacy and Linguistics Department. Feel free to contact me with any resources, comments and questions at ebarnes@bmcc.cuny.edu.

Critical Data Literacy is a course designed to help students acquire higher-level inductive reasoning skills. Students will develop understanding of various ways to model practical problems using statistical and probabilistic reasoning. The course will focus on foundational methods of critical reasoning under uncertainty and will aim at helping students understand the philosophical and conceptual background of the effort to draw appropriate conclusions on the basis of partial information. It will explore the relationship between truth and data, helping students understand the philosophical underpinnings of concepts such as probability, certainty, conjecture, inference, and data-based reasoning. The course will also explore the main challenges of inductive thinking and help students recognize fallacies in data interpretation. Prerequisite: Any 100-level CRT or PHI course

Critical Data Literacy is a course designed to help students acquire higher-level inductive reasoning skills. Students will develop understanding of various ways to model practical problems using statistical and probabilistic reasoning. The course will focus on foundational methods of critical reasoning under uncertainty and will aim at helping students understand the philosophical and conceptual background of the effort to draw appropriate conclusions on the basis of partial information. It will explore the relationship between truth and data, helping students understand the philosophical underpinnings of concepts such as probability, certainty, conjecture, inference, and data-based reasoning. The course will also explore the main challenges of inductive thinking and help students recognize fallacies in data interpretation. Prerequisite: Any 100-level CRT or PHI course