UO Critical Thinking: Media and Academia

The aim of this course is to enable students to manage the demands of literacy in a critical manner in a university environment. This course develops students' criticality for academic purposes. Students are introduced to critical thinking and reading through the analysis of a range of texts involving the assessment of strength of argument, bias, credibility, and reliability. The students initially learn how to critique non-academic texts and extend these skills by conducting a literature review of a journal article. The literature review process involves learning about research methods, ethics and importance of new and reliable knowledges in academia. The course develops the students understanding of language use for different purposes.