SCIENCES
Biology 100 – Concepts of Biology Spring, 2007
From www.big6.org/showarticle.php?id=410
Critical Thinking and Information Literacy
Do you believe everything you hear and read? How do you know what is true? How do you know what is legitimate? Where do you go for answers, and how do you frame your questions so that you can gain the knowledge that you are seeking? Learning to think critically is an important tool for empowering yourself to be a self-learner and an objective thinker. In this class you will be asked to build connections between what you are learning in class and the news that is printed in the New York Times (i.e., Critical Thought Projects). These exercises will provide you with an opportunity to develop the habit of reading well-written science articles, increase your awareness of science in the news, and begin to understand how to get scientific information from something other than student textbooks. The laboratory exercise today will help you prepare for those projects by giving you an opportunity to develop the literacy skills needed to find and use public information.
Literacy skills are needed once a question or curiosity has been raised. From there a student needs to identify what information is needed to answer the question, and then locate the information. Once the information is located a student needs to evaluate it (i.e., is it legitimate?) and use it appropriately. Part of evaluating the information is knowing its source and being able to cite the source so that others can also judge it. How sources are cited is discipline specific and precise, and we will be using the following model: Lastname, Firstname. Year. Title. Journal. Volume(issue): page numbers.
Information Seeking Strategies directs students to “determine the range of possible sources,” but when you ask students to identify prospective sources of information, they will overwhelmingly respond, “the Internet (see data in the heading). Learning to evaluate web sites is a critical skill for today’s students. You need to understand that anybody can create a web site, and that some of the people who do so may be collecting and publishing only information that advances their point of view, or promotes their product. Be skeptical about what you read by seeking more information.
Students need to be reminded that different sources have different strengths (www.big6.org/showarticle.php?id=410): Encyclopedias are excellent for an overview of a topic, and can help students narrow their focus as well as provide a factual background against which to measure the reliability of other information they find. Magazines and newspapers provide more current information than books, and can be more credible than a random selection of web sites. * Interviews provide students with the interviewee’s personal perspective about a problem. Primary sources provide invaluable insights into contemporary views of historical events. World Wide Web sources are updated frequently, and are often more current than publications in print.
Rules of Critical Thinking (adopted from www.cognitivecenter.org): 1. Be open minded about new ideas 2. Don’t argue about things of which you know nothing 3. Know when you need more information 4. Be aware that different people have different ideas about the meaning of words, concepts etc. 5. Know the difference between something that must be true and something that might be true 6. Avoid mistakes in your reasoning 7. Question anything that doesn’t make sense 8. Separate logical and emotional thinking 9. Build up your vocabulary so that you can understand others and be understood by them
Laboratory Exercises:
- Critical Thought Clippings Project A student should Clip an interesting article from The New York Times. Copies of the paper can be found in the Concepts laboratory classroom, and students can keep a copy of the paper after it has been used. Clip articles, editorials, columns, letters to the editor, and other items that interest you and may have biological significance. Keep in mind that news stories are intended to relay the basic facts of a topic, while the others weigh competing opinions and points of view.
Cite the article by date and by page(s) and column(s). For example, write A1: 1 to identify an article that begins on page 1 of section A, in the first (left-hand) column. To indicate that the article continues on page A18 in the second and third columns, write A1: 1 – A18: 2,3.
Students should follow their instructors to the Biology Department Computer Lab where they are to go on-line and seek resources and information to address their question of interest. Student write-ups should include the following categories below. Students should frame and state a question based on the main idea of the article. Questions can range in complexity starting from simple knowledge gaining questions to more complex comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and finally evaluation forms. Students can discuss their question in groups to determine what category of question they are focusing on for today’s exercise and how to begin to answer it. Students should work in teams to search the internet for information that can help them answer their questions. They should be skeptical of the information they find and be able to support the validity of the sources they identify, and understand what the sources are (eg., magazine, book, website, search engine).
There are five project requirements: 1. List the New York Times article you selected for your project. (i.e., Author, date, Title, Section and Page number). 2. What is the main idea of the article you selected? 3. What question or curiosity does this article raise in your mind? (Suggested Hint: Start with – These articles make me wonder if, how, why, what, when……). 4. What biological knowledge would you need to have to answer your question? 5. List 4 sources in Scientific Format that you could use to answer your curiosity/question. Explain how they are relevant to your question and what information they provide to help you grow in your quest for knowledge and truth on that topic. a. Two- peer review published sources (e.g., journals, magazines, books, periodicals, ect…) b. Two Web Sites
- OPTIONAL. Information Literacy Tutorial. Students accompanied by their instructor should go to the The Biology Computer Lab (room 244) and log onto http://library.wcsu.edu/tip/. You need to click into the arrow to move the tutorial along. At the end of the tutorial is a quiz. Students should take this quiz and e-mail it directly to T. Pinou. You will be prompted to do this. This quiz should be appended to the laboratory paper for today.
EDUCATION