20(2)pp33-56TeachingSupplement2.pdf Problems and Useful Techniques: My Experiences in Teaching Courses in Argumentation, Informal Logic and Critical Thinking DOUGLAS WALTON Dcpanmenl of Philosophy University of Winnipeg 515 Portage Avenue Winnipeg , Manitoba Canada R3B 2E9 E-mail : wallon@io .uwinnipeg.ca 1. Types of Courses TS 35 There are three levels of courses that I routinely teach that involve informal logic. One is a first-year course called "Introduction to Logical Reasoning." The next is a second-year course, "Logic." It is open to anyone, but is a (highly recom- mended) requirement for philosophy majors and honors students. It contains about a fifty-fifty balance between formal and informal logic. The remaining one is a third-year course called "Argumentation," which attracts senior students from various disciplines. but often contains quite a few honors philosophy students. It contains little formal logic. My experience is that teaching the latter two courses tends to go well, possibly because the students tend to come from among our better students, and they are well-motivated to learn the subject matter. Teaching the first-year course tends to be more uneven. It can be problematic some years, and can easily go wrong.The reason may be that this course gets many students who are poorly prepared and motivated, and who may drop out during the first term. This course often gets quite a few very good students as well , and the mixture seems to create problems, especially in the first term, until things settle down a bit. What I have been noticing is more of a drift towards a " high school" atmosphere in this class. Getting some of the students 10 pay attention. or to grasp points that I would have considered very elementary in the past, seems to be a problem. The second year Logic course is very typical, and not much different, I as - sume from what is taught at many universities. I have no especially innovative techniques used there, except to do plenty of exercises, and build the exams around them. The third year Argumentation course is more unusual. I know several col - leagues at other universities who are teaching roughly comparable courses , but I think they are in a small minority. It is comparatively rare to find such a course taught at upper levels in the university curriculum. It is rare to find them taught at the graduate level. It is also extremely rare to see graduate students doing a thesis on a problem in this area (outside ofa few centers, like the Department .ofSpeech ~ Informal Logic, 20.2 (2000) reaching Supplement #2: pp. TS 35 - TS 38. TS 36 Douglas Walton Communication and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam or the Philosophy Program at the University of Windsor). However, it is my own experience that this type of course can be hi ghly successful, that there is a very useful technique for teaching it, and that this technique is not all that difficult to master or to implement. 2. The Case Study Method In the Argumentation course, I do have an innovative method that has worked very well for me in the past seven years so. Over the years I gradually began to use this technique more and more. My technique is to build everything around the case study method. The classes begin with an exposition of general methods. but quickly turns to individual case studies of examples of argumentative discourse. I use examples from magazines, newspapers, news media, parliamentary debates, and all kinds of other sources. Instead of assigning an essay , I give students a specific text of discourse-for example , an argument from a newspaper column- and give them instructions on how to analyze it. Often a fallacy is involved, or some sort of argumentation that appears to contain a fallac y. The assignment is like an essay, but is directed to a specific case. I use different cases all the time, as I find good ones. The students like this way of doing assignments. They don ' t have to memorize things, as they typically have to in a conventional test. And they don't have to agoni ze about choosing an essay topic, and knowing how to proceed with it, as they typically do with a conventional essay assignment. From an in structor's point of view, the advantage is that plagiarism is reduced. The students can't just download something from the net. because each assignment is unique to the spe- cifics of the case chosen for analysis. They have to work with the case they are given. But students seem to like this kind of assignment-maybe because it is different from their other course. or becau se they are not left on their own so much to get lost in tackling an essay topic where the problem is to try to cut down the huge unruly mass of relevant information they can find. With this more advanced type of course on argumentation, I would highly recommend the case study method. I also used it in a graduate course on argu- mentation in the Deptartment of Communication Studies at Northwestern Univer- sity in 1999, where it appeared to be quite succe ssful. Certainly I got a lot of positive feedback from individual students. Many instructors in informal logic course may be already using something like the case study method. I would sug- gest possibly even going further in this direction , in the way that I have found successful with more senior students. 3. Problems in Teaching Introductory Critical Thinking As for the pedagogical problem posed by the Intro. course, I wish I could say that I had a method or technique that has proved successful. But I do not. and from what I can see. especially by looking at the abundance of textbooks on critical thinking, I don't think anyone else has solved this problem either. Most of these Teachi ng Argumen tation , Informa l Logic & CT TS 37 students do not d o well w ith the case stud y method. What the y seem to need are simple mechanical procedures that they can apply with out be ing stressed by bor- derl ine cases, or any doubts at all abo ut what the " right" answer is. Many of these st udents have great diffi culty grasping what an argument is, or that arguments are somet imes useful and necessary. Some of these st udents have a huge problem grasping the distincti on between an explanati on and argume nt. Many of them thi nk that all arg ume nts are rea lly expla natio ns. They can't art iculate why , but they insist they are ri ght, and sometimes it is the other stude nts who best try to persuade them th at they a re n' t right. But even they a rc not s ucccssfu i. Many might say that these stud ent s are j ust not ready for cr itical th inki ng, and si nce they usuall y wind up dropping out anyway, or failing, that this outcome is the best thi ng, Or is inevitab le anyway. But I still fee l tha t the re is a way of reaching these stude nts , but we j ust haven' t fo un d it yet. Whoever does find it wi ll like ly become ri ch and famo us. But I do not yet know how it will be done. nor does anyo ne else in the fie ld , as far as I can tell. T here arc two ki nds of proposals that are pl ausib le. One is to make the st udents do a lot of writin g ass ignm ents based on analyses of argum entat ive passages, and then have the in st ru ctor go over these wrinen ass ignm ents with each student. Thi s kind of proposa l is often suggested. Bu t the prob lem is th at it is costly to imp leme nt. It req ui res a lot of tutor ial time. Th e second pro posal is to set up a comp ute rize d learn ing program that the st u- dents can use alongs ide th e regul ar lect ures. T h is second type of proposal may sound me re ly tre nd y. But I thi nk that wh ile it wo uld not work well w it h hi ghe r leve l courses, it co u ld be j ust t he right th ing th at is needed at the introductory critical th inking level. As indicated above, there is a special k ind of prob lem with th is type of cou rse. I think that the so lution, when it comes, will be by means of interactive software that takes the beginner, step by step, tho ugh easy exam pl es, and res ponds helpful ly to guesses, qu estions and wro ng answers, The use of such inte racti ve software, along with an instructor a nd a textbook w ill , I thin k be the fo rmat Ihat w ill prov id e the solu lion. Th is project is worlh trying a nyway . It has already bee n altempte d, but all of the soft- ware I have examined so fa r is, in my opini on , unsuccessful , and a ve ry long way from be ing successful. I w ish I co ul d carry out th is project myself. But I lack Ihe com pute r skills a nd the time needed to do it pro pe rl y. It should be a gro up projecl, well fun ded, w ith part icipants who have the latest comp ute r sk ills and the latest state of the art argumentati on techniques. I would like to be involved, if there is anyone out there who has the right com puter soft ware wr iting skills and who is willi ng and ab le to spend eno ugh time on th is project. 4 . Recomm endations on How to Proceed I am sure that the problems in teaching introductory courses in critical thi nking I have described are not uni que to my uni vers ity . I am pretty confident in guessing that these problems are very widespread, or even universa l. On the olher hand , TS 38 Douglas Walton they are not unique to critical thinking courses. Introductory classes tend to be larger than upper-level courses. They have many more students who are just out of high school, and are struggling with the new experience of university classes. Even so, critical thinking is harder to teach than many courses, because it is a skills course. The instructor can't so easily retreat into the usual quantification and mechanization, making tests that use multiple-choice questions, or that simply require memorization of the textbook. As indicated above, I don't have any single solution to this problem that would easy to implement. All I have is to hold out the incentive that, in my opinion, solving it should be possible. As for the senior level course in argumentation, here I have proposed what I think is a highly effective pedagogical method that can be applied right away, with some preparation. You might think that the same technique for the senior level course could "trickle down" to the introductory level course. But I do not think that will work, at least in any straightforward way . The key problem with the introductory critical thinking course is that the students, or many of them , are simply not ready for all the problems of interpreting a natural language text of discourse, and the judgment required to deal with all the vague borders of realistic cases of argumentation. They seem to need some sort of artificial structure com- posed of simple questions with clear answers. They need to begin with clear examples that illustrate, for example, the distinction between an argument and an explanation, and that don 't introduce too many complications all at once . I don't see any reason why devising such a pedagogical method is impossible . But J just don't see any way to do it that is highly effective, or better than just proceeding by indirection. The best J can claim here is, though my own personal experiences over thirty years of teaching, to have formulated the problem in a way that may narrow down the range of plausible avenues to a solution. But since we are engaged in teaching this type of course on very wide scale, the best to strive for is to try to work towards improving what we are already doing, on a day to day bas is. What J have proposed above, however, is to consider a group research project to develop new methods that are partly based on the use of interactive computer software. Part of the project would be to test out and refine the methods arrived at , by using them on selected groups of students, as the project proceeds. Thus the project would combine teaching and research. J don't see any other way of moving ahead that is very likely to have any prospect of improving the current state of affairs in introductory critical thinking courses.