Undergraduate - UnitATS2946 - Critical thinking: How to analyse arguments and improve your reasoning skills

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Philosophy
Offered	Clayton First semester 2015 (Day) Clayton First semester 2015 (Off-campus) Clayton Second semester 2015 (Off-campus) Clayton Summer semester A 2015 (Off-campus)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Jennifer Windt (Semester 1); Dr Sam Butchart (Semester 2)

Notes

The unit is offered as part of the Philosophy Flexible Learning program - see the Philosophy Flexible LearningPhilosophy Flexible Learning (http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy-flexible-learning/) page for further information.
The unit is offered as a Summer Semester unit - see the Summer Arts ProgramSummer Arts Program (http://www.monash.edu/students/courses/arts/summer-program.html) page for further information.

Synopsis

This unit is intended to improve students' critical thinking skills. In particular, we focus on the skills involved in argument analysis. We will address the essential features of good arguments and how they can be articulated and represented. We will also examine the many ways in which reasoning can go wrong and how to avoid them. While we will focus on some of the theory of successful thinking, our main focus will be the practical techniques necessary for you to reason more effectively. Students completing the unit successfully will be better at evaluating evidence, critiquing arguments, and will be able to use these abilities in a wide variety of future studies.

Outcomes

Students successfully completing this subject should:

have a theoretical understanding of what an argument is
have developed the skills to extract the arguments from a variety of texts
be able to identify and represent the structure of an argument
understand the criteria of argument success and have the skills to apply those criteria to evaluate a variety of arguments
have developed the skills to evaluate some common types of argument.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 75%
Exam: 25%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Jennifer Windt (Semester 1); Dr Sam Butchart (Semester 2)

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Philosophy

Prohibitions

ATS1833