Lights! Camera! Analysis!
Film Crew Visits the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies
Gary Comstock, Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor of Philosophy, works hard to promote critical thinking at NC State. Among other things, he lobbies for the use of an online critical thinking and civil discourse class called thinkARGUMENTS, which he requires all his undergraduate students to complete. So when the makers of thinkARGUMENTS commissioned Broadview Films to make a promotional video about their work, they naturally called on Comstock for help.
A crew from Broadview descended on the department in late October for filming. They interviewed Comstock as well as Jordan Birkner, a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies student at NC State who served for two years as the “lab manager” on Comstock’s How We Evaluate project.
In their interviews, Comstock and Birkner discussed the thinkARGUMENTS online course and their research on its effectiveness as a tool for cultivating critical thinking. Based on decades of pedagogical research, thinkARGUMENTS consists of dozens of lessons and a data bank of thousands of exercises. It seeks to teach the skill of argument mapping, a procedure that visually represents the connections between claims and their supporting premises. According to Comstock, “research shows that argument mapping dramatically impacts students’ cognitive skills, leading to large and generalized improvements in analytical reasoning.”
The thinkARGUMENTS platform is a product of ThinkerAnalytix, an education non-profit organization spun out of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. According to their website, the group seeks to leverage “thousands of years of pedagogy from philosophy and custom education technology to offer a portfolio of courses and programs that teach productive disagreement as an essential part of learning and working communities.”
Comstock believes universities must do more to teach critical thinking and civil discourse. He describes himself as a “true believer” in efforts to extend this kind of instruction across disciplines and colleges.
