Course Instructor Contact: David Stamos dstamos@yorku.ca

This is a skills-based course which focuses on skills that are essential for most of your university courses (and consequently can be expected to raise your grades in those courses). Specifically this means: conceptual analysis, fallacy analysis, argument structure analysis, premise analysis, essay style.

1) S. Morris Engel (2000). With Good Reason. 6^th edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s. ISBN 978-1457695957

https://store.macmillanlearning.com/ca/product/With-Good-Reason/p/0312157584?searchText=Engel

This will not be available in the bookstore. The above link is for renting or purchasing a paper copy. We will be using this book in the second quarter of the course.

2) Chris MacDonald and Lewis Vaughn (2016). York University Custom Edition: The Power of Critical Thinking. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-901536-8

The above will be available in the bookstore as a paper copy (make sure you buy the edition for this course). An e-book version will also be available through the bookstore. We will be using this book for the fourth quarter of the course.

Conceptual Analysis Assignment (20%) – due at the end of the first quarter

Fallacy Analysis Assignment or Test (15%) – due at the end of the second quarter

Passage Analysis Assignment (20%) – due at the end of the third quarter

Article Analysis Assignment (25%) – due at the end of the fourth quarter

Participation (20%) – accumulated throughout the duration of the course

The Delivery of this Course:

This is a fully ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS course. What this means is that there are no times, locations, in-person activities, or interactions on campus for any of the lectures or coursework.

The lectures will consist of teaching videos combined with what I call Skeleton Notes. There will not be any tutorials but there will be a weekly discussion forum in which we can all communicate with each other (ask and answer questions, etc.)

There will be a Participation mark, which will consist of viewing the lecture videos within a Monday to Friday time frame and submitting homework within the same time frame. All submissions will be to Moodle. There will also be teaching videos taking up the homework.

The major assignments will be due within a specified time frame and will involve deadlines (after which there are late charges; only the fallacy test will not be accepted late). All submissions will be to Moodle. The specific information for those dates and time frames will be specified in the Course Syllabus (which will be on Moodle before the start of the course).

Students should especially be aware that this is a DOUBLE-SPEED course. What this means is that the workload is twice as much per week, but you finish the course in one semester instead of two.

The ability to apply to other courses what is learned/acquired in this course.

As this is primarily a skills-based course, not primarily a knowledge-based course, much of your learning will be from applications and practice. This is why the Participation grade is 20%. It is relatively easy to get 20/20 for this portion of the course (and even easier to get 0/20 if you don’t put in the time and do what is required). You therefore need to be able to commit yourself to putting in the time and doing the work per week (and again, this is a double-speed course). The asynchronous nature of this course, however, gives you considerable flexibility compared with an in-person course.