How to Develop your
Critical Thinking Skills
David M. Boje
September 7, 1999

During this course you will have occasion to check the WWW for resources, read strange book chapters, encounter alien points of view, and stretch your mind in many fun ways. The question arises how do you know if a story or text is presenting information or dis-information, if what is presented is valid and reliable? You will be learning important skills to decide these things using deconstruction and critical theory. But, you need to start with Critical Thinking Skills before you are ready for these more advanced ways of knowing.

Start with Internet Dectective - an interactive tutorial  on evaluating the quality of Internet resources (press here) for tutorial. It is free but you must register. Or use my login ID --- dboje

About Critical Thinking To study up on four definitions of Critical Thinking, please (press here). To see how experts tell the difference between scholarly work and propaganda (click here). To see how Critical Thinking relates to how web courses are designed  (press here).  Play here for a while, see what instruction is in related sites.

You may also want to assess the reliability and accuracy of what you read using Critical Thinking. Here is a summary list of Critical Thinking criteria that web evaluation experts seem to think important (see web list below for other treatments). The purpose of these Critical Thinking activities is to train you to think so that deconstruction and Critical Thoery will be easier to learn. You can use it to rate credibility of sources you read. But beware, Critical Thinking is decidedly modernist, assuming some universial and essentialist expert abstract standards exist to decide such things. As you progress in the term, you will learn to put such musing in context. For now Critical Thinking is a useful exercise for your mind.

Boje's Critical Thinking Criteria for Web Rating
(Scoring Instructions: add up the number of yes answers)

         STRUCTURAL DESIGN

  1. Does the site contain links to data and claims referenced?
  2. Does site link to info on other sites?
  3. Is the information in the site well-organized?
  4. Is the sequence of info easy to follow?

    5. AUTHORITY

  5. Are the author(s) writing in their field of study?
  6. What are the credentials of the authors?
  7. Does the site have an academic, governmental, or commercial affiliation?
  8. Is the site peer-reviewed?
  9. Is the info backed up by evidence?

    10. CURRENT

  10. Is the information up-to-date?
  11. How often is info updated?
  12. Does the information build in prior work?
  13. Are the statements made true?

    14. PURPOSE

  14. Is the purpose stated?
  15. Does info presented match the purpose?

    16. ACCURACY

  16. Is this information consistent with other resources on the topic?
  17. Is the information referenced to source materials?
  18. Are studies and investigations presented?
  19. Does info un-biased (balanced in coverage)?

    20. VALUE

  20. Does site present information not available elsewhere?
  21. Is there in depth coverage of the topics?
  22. Is this information NOT to be found in a library?
  23. Does the info have face validity?

    24. DURABILITY

  24. Will site be there in long term?
  25. Has site been maintained for more than a year?

    26. CRITICAL THINKING

  26. Does the site entertain alternative concepts and ideas outside the points of view being presented?
  27. Is the information relevant to the questions and problems they are entertaining?
  28. Is the thinking in these documents logical?
  29. Are multiple points of view presented?
  30. Is this scholarly (as opposed to propaganda)?
                         _____ Score out of 30 possible Yes answers.
 

Internet Sites With More information
Evaluating Internet Resources
http://www.imcpl.lib.in.us/evaluate.htm
http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/webdocs/evaluation.html
http://www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/ded/tt/19eval.html
http://www.udayton.edu/~library/tutorial/inteval.htm
http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/ressubj/subject/intrnt/evaluate.htm

Rettig, James. "Putting the Squeeze on the Information Firehose: The Need for Neteditors and Netreviewers." < http://www.swem.wm.edu/firehose.html > [22 November 1995]

 Janicke, Lisa. "Resource Selection and Information Evaluation."< http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~janicke/Evaluate.html > [4 December 1995]

 Ormondroyd, Joan and Michael Engle and Tony Cosgrave. "How to CriticallyAnalyze Information Sources." < http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/skill26.htm >[21 December 1995]

O'Reilly and Associates and Trish Information Systems. "Defining the Internet Opportunity." (demograhic statistics) < http://www.ora.com/www/info/research/users/index.html > [16 April 1996]

Liu, Jian. "Understanding WWW Search Tools."< http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/search/ > [9 February 1996]

 December, John. "Challenges for Web Information Providers."Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, vol 1, no.6 (1994) pg. 13.Online. Internet. < http:///www.rpi.edu/~decemj/cmc/mag/1994/oct/webip6.html > [5 December 1995]

Ciolek, T. Matthew. "Information Quality." World Wide Web Virtual Library < http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-InfoQuality.html> [4 April 1996]

Other

Webster Hypertext http://work.ucsd.edu:5141/cgi-bin/http_webster