EXERCISING CRITICAL THINKING IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
EXERCISING CRITICAL THINKING IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT

Summary/Abstract: Critical thinking is a reflective mechanism that helps students to evaluate the information and knowledge that they acquire during classes or that they come into contact with in their everyday lives. Critical assessment aids students to ascertain the extent to which these concepts are relevant for and applicable to their lives, careers, purposes and personal experiences. Critical thinking requires students not solely to assimilate information but also to interact with it actively, to evaluate it, to understand whether or not it is accurate, to determine its role and the goal it may serve. Traditional classroom settings foster the development of critical thinking skills through interaction between students engaged in group activities as well as through careful prompting by the instructors. However, this traditional setting is no longer sufficient and does not assist students in developing these skills for the virtual world. This article suggests that the transfer of critical thinking skills to the online environment can be done in several ways in the e-learning process. The possible activities that incorporate these skills could be either individual (the student can interact with the problem or situation on his/her own) or they could be directed towards an already existing or newly formed learning community, in which students interact not only with the given task but also with each other and they stimulate each other to apply critical thinking skills. These types of interactive exercises could be adapted to suit the study domain of almost any student, since the formats are quite flexible and the instructor simply needs to incorporate the specific situation/case/scenario.

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