Critical Thinking Modules

During the past few decades, the rise in social media has coincided with the spread of misinformation.  As political science faculty, perhaps more than faculty in any other discipline, the responsibility of teaching our students how to distinguish between factual and fake information is taking up more of our time in the classroom. This requires teaching more critical thinking skills and incorporating appropriate assignments into our courses to reinforce those skills. Our students must take ownership of their learning experience, beginning with their first entry into the college classroom.

In 2022, Terry Gilmour (Professor, Midland College) and her undergraduate students Maria Gonzalez, Faith Lopez, Carlos Torres, and Elizabeth Whitten designed and created the following individual critical thinking and information literacy active learning modules. Undergraduate students are encouraged to engage with and complete each of these eight modules to help them improve their capacity to critically gather and process information in a political media landscape filled with misinformation.