Critical Thinking with Introduction to Physics

I give an extended introduction to some concepts in critical thinking before starting the physics concepts in my PHY 101 classes. The activities, as they are now, guide students through: what makes sources of information reliable, the structure of a logical argument which I relate to the models we use in class, a little basic logic, logical fallacies, how to design a simple test to see if an idea is true, the importance of blinding, and intuitive versus analytical reasoning. The students seem to enjoy the material though they often find it challenging. It allows me to relate how we came to our understanding of different physics concepts to core ideas in critical thinking. I started my first course at Estrella Mountain Community College including a few of these concepts and the material has changed dramatically over the semesters. After a more solid baseline of Lawson Scientific Reasoning data has been collected with the updated versions of these activities this semester, I will attempt a class with a more truncated activity containing some of these topics and see how the scores compare.