Dr. Jonathan Short

jshort@yorku.ca

Virtual office hours: Office Hours will be held using Zoom twice per week. I will use a schedular app on Moodle to schedule these appointments. Please see the Moodle site for further details.

This course aims to provide students with a grounding in critical thinking, argumentative skills, and the basics of political philosophy as applied to social issues we grapple with in everyday life. The course focuses on skills-development as much as abstract knowledge. Students who attend lectures, participate as fully as possible in the course, and keep up with their assignments, will experience an increase in their reading comprehension and ability to think critically, to the end of improving their sensitivity to reasoned discussion. This course seeks to present an “intellectual antidote” to some of the deeply anti-intellectual and anti-critical attitudes increasingly prevalent in North American culture.

The course will be broken down into roughly two parts. The first part will focus on the basics and mechanics of argumentation, identifying logical fallacies, reading comprehension, and the use of statistics. The second part will focus on the techniques of persuasion frequently utilized in the mass media, social media, and advertising designed to persuade you by non-rational means. The goal of this second part is to apply the skills learned in the first half to help you think more critically about the sources of information you encounter in our media-saturated society.

Technical requirements for taking the course:

This course will be delivered entirely online; there will be no in-person meetings during the course. That means you must have the technical capacity, that is, the technology, to complete an online course successfully. In this course that means the following: a) stable high speed internet connection, b) data, preferably LTE data, if using a phone or cellular data, c) Video conferencing software (York uses Zoom, see link below for how to get this free of charge), d) A computer, tablet, or phone capable with webcam and microphone, a stable web-browser, access to Moodle/Eclass, and Zoom for online office hours.

Here are some useful links for student computing information, resources and help:
Student Guide to Moodle
Zoom@YorkU Best Practices
Zoom@YorkU User Reference Guide
Computing for Students Website

Student Guide to eLearning at York University

To determine Internet connection and speed, there are online tests, such as Speedtest, that can be run.]

First Term: Critical Thinking: Argument and Argumentation. 2014. 2nd Edition. Authors: Jean Saindon and Peter John Krek. ISBN: 978-0-17-666100-7. Publisher: Nelson Education.

A selection of shorter texts will be made available on Moodle in pdf format or with appropriate links to library sources.

1. Group Exercise: Due: bi-weekly, throughout the course: Weight: 20%
2. Argument Quiz: Weight: 15%, October 19
3. Fallacies & Non-Deductive Arguments Test: Weight:20%, December 7
4. Passage Analysis: Weight:25%, February 1
5. Take-Home Test Weight 20%, April 12

Times and locations: Please note that this is a course that depends on remote teaching and learning. There will be no in-person interactions or activities on campus. This course will be delivered asynchronously, meaning there will be no lectures in real time; all lectures will be pre-recorded and viewable at a time convenient for your schedule. There will be interactive activities with other students, however, these will be asynchronous as well.

Organization of the course

The entire course, including the submission of assignments, participation/discussion and test-taking, will take place on the course’s Moodle site. Although we are scheduled to meet at particular times and days of the week in the official course calendar, this course has no live virtual meetings outside of office hours. Like a purely online course, you can learn the course material following the readings and activities according to your own schedule.

Because this is a skills-based course, the material will be made available in a sequential “week-by-week” format. That means you will not be able to jump around in the material, but must learn it in a particular order. The course lectures and other material will be posted the week we cover material and you will not have access to material in advance of covering it in the course. In this way, even though the material is delivered asynchronously, it still follows a weekly format.

This course is skills-based, meaning that it is less focussed on what you know than on how you know. In this course you will expand your ability to think critically, to formulate a cogent, logical, and coherent argument, and to spot the flaws in the arguments and claims of others. It will prepare you to live in our media-saturated society with a sceptical and critical mind. You will also learn to express your ideas in writing in a logically consistent form. Finally, the course will teach you some of the approaches used by advertisers and other prominent social institutions in trying to persuade people by non-rational means. In learning about these approaches, the goal will be to enable you to better understand these so that you can better apply the techniques of critical thinking examined in the first part of the course.

Grading: The grading scheme for the course conforms to the 9-point grading system used in undergraduate programs at York (e.g., A+ = 9, A = 8, B+ - 7, C+ = 5, etc.). Assignments and tests* will bear either a letter grade designation or a corresponding number grade (e.g. A+ = 90 to 100, A = 80 to 90, B+ = 75 to 79, etc.)
(For a full description of York grading system see the York University Undergraduate Calendar - http://calendars.registrar.yorku.ca/2010-2011/academic/index.htm

Students may take a limited number of courses for degree credit on an ungraded (pass/fail) basis. For full information on this option see Alternative Grading Option in the LA&PS section of the Undergraduate Calendar.

Assignment Submission: Proper academic performance depends on students doing their work not only well, but on time. Accordingly, assignments for this course must be received on the due date specified for the assignment. Assignments are to be handed in on the Moodle site for this course in Drop-boxes indicated.

Lateness Penalty: Assignments received later than the due date will be penalized 2% per day that assignment is late. Exceptions to the lateness penalty for valid reasons such as illness, compassionate grounds, etc., may be entertained by the Course Instructor but will require supporting documentation (e.g., a doctor’s letter). Students who have recognized accommodation from the Accessible Learning Centre at York that permits it will be given extra time to complete tests and assignments as appropriate.

Missed Tests: Students with a documented reason for missing a course test, such as illness, compassionate grounds, etc., which is confirmed by supporting documentation (e.g., doctor’s letter) may request accommodation from the Course Instructor. Students will be permitted to write a new timed test or upload the assignment to Moodle (Turn-it-In) after the official cut-off date for the test or assignment. Further extensions or accommodation will require students to submit a formal petition to the Faculty.

Recording Policy: This course makes use of recorded lectures and posted Power-Point Slides. While it is legitimate to view and download this material for your own personal use in taking this course, it is a violation of academic honesty to post any of this material to websites designed to distribute course material for purposes of profit or academic advantage. It is expected that any downloaded lecture material you have in the course will be destroyed upon completion, and not to be otherwise sold or distributed on online platforms. If you distribute this material you are helping other students gain an unfair advantage in the course that you did not have, and lowering the value of the effort you put into the course.