"Scarecrow" explains his Critical and Reflective Thinking

NCLC 110 In NCLC 110, reflective thinking made up most of the class. Throughout the class, we were assigned various readings from and The Arlington Reader and The Norton's Field Guide. Most of our assignments consisted of developing a summary of the author's arguments, analyzing a specific part of a reading, or developing our own opinion of the reading. Both in and out of class, we were expected to explore our mind, and see if there were any reflections we were able to make about a specific part of one of the readings. Some of the types of essays that were required assignments were analytical essays, argumentative essays, reflection essays, and compare and contrasting essays. Even though an essay might have been called a reflective essay, every type of essay written in the class had to do with reflecting on a specific topic. Another part that dealt with reflective thinking was group work. For example, we went to hemlock and were separated into groups. From there, we were completing all types of tasks and activities as a group. If we did not accomplish a task at first, we had to stop and reflect on how the group could improve the next time around. For the Higher Education Project, we were given a specific topic that was affecting higher education. As a task for the project, we had to develop a reason as to why this topic was affecting higher education. The reflective thinking part of it was analyzing the problems of the topic, and then being able to come up with solutions that would fix the problems. Overall, reflective thinking was a vital aspect of this course. At the start of the course, it was essential that we came into the class with an open mind.

NCLC 130  In NCLC 130, critical thinking was an important part of the class. Over the course of the six weeks, we explored many different concepts and ideologies dealing with The Social World. Everything that we worked on in class was solely based off of facts. In other words, work that was done for the class explored information that has already been discovered and proven to be true. Within NCLC 130, we had assignments that dealt with interpreting the past, present, and future of historical information and statistics. Some of the assignment topics were migration, globalization, and imperialism. For example, the Discovery Project was about a specific migration group that related to our discovery subject person. Within the project, we looked up statistics of how many immigrants were on certain ships, how many people settled in the different areas throughout the United States, and much more. Then we researched why the immigrants came to the United States, and what life was like once they arrived in the country. Finally, all of our research was put into essays over the course of the six weeks. Another example can be the Integrative Group project. This required the class groups to come up with a presentation dealing with migration. It was a broad topic because the professors wanted us to be able to realize that there are many situations in history that deal with migration. We had to create a museum exhibit, which explained our specific topic about migration. Overall, NCLC 130 was a course based on facts and our ability to interpret those facts. Throughout the course, we dealt with ourselves in a broader picture of reality.