hello my name is ryan holden and i am a lecturer here with success courses and the lead program as part of university college i am here to introduce a video going over the eight characteristics of a strong critical thinker we have our faculty that teaches this course uh here to introduce these characteristics uh a faculty member will provide a short introduction of themselves a short definition of the skill or characteristic and then an example of how they have used that characteristic in their day-to-day life the characteristics of a strong critical thinker are analytical skills effective communication research and inquiry skills flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity open-minded skepticism collaborative learning being attentive mindful and curious and creative problem solving uh thank you and enjoy the video hi everyone i'm dr alison atkins and i am a lecturer on the west campus so critical thinkers need to have strong analytical skills which allow them to provide logical support and thinking for their beliefs instead of relying on just their opinion alone additionally strong analytical skills allows a critical thinker to evaluate other people's arguments so that you're not duped by faulty reasoning so this is pretty close to home for me as i'm sure it is for other people but my family has a weekly dinner with my in-laws and my in-laws love to talk about current events and argue about current events especially ones with salacious headlines so when they do bring up uh something that maybe doesn't have a full factual truth behind it i'm able to analyze their arguments and then provide strong logical counter arguments to their point and this my friends makes my dinner table a much happier place hello my name is benji tucker and i'm part of the success courses team here at tempe asu campus i'm going to talk to you today about effective communication effective communication helps us be better critical thinkers particularly if we use our skills of listening speaking and writing to the best potential that we can by using listening it helps us really pay attention to what others are sharing with us we want to be able to not just hear but listen to what they're sharing with us putting ourselves in their shoes so we understand what they're speaking about what are they truly trying to tell us and as we communicate through writing we want to be well organized and inclusion of details so others understand specifically what we mean so i want to share a couple examples with you here at home with my husband i use a calendar in the kitchen he's not big on using calendars and i am so and i bet you are too calendars help to keep us organized and be better communicators so what i usually do is i ask and i have to listen to the information he gives me so that i can make sure i'm keeping it well organized on our family calendar so i know when appointments are coming up for any one of us or when we have things to do for the house so that way we stay on top of things we keep ourselves organized here at home as well so i'm usually doing the checking and i make sure i write things down and i listen to what my husband or one of my daughters is telling me so that i can make sure i keep us on track and um the other example is with anyone in my family the grocery list they have learned that if they notice we run out of something or if we need something or they're wanting something specifically for you know a treat or something they need to use details when they write things on the grocery list for me so instead of just writing snacks okay what kind of snacks do you want if you want juice don't just write just down tell me if you want orange juice or grape juice um if not then it becomes my choice and i'll buy what i want to buy um so being good with details is also going to help us keep us organized within our effective communication and remember to also use that empathy when you're listening to others and speaking with others because we all come from a different place with the information um or the background of details that we are sharing with one another so that's important to keep in mind and watch your nonverbal cues your body language we want to be have open communication and not show people that we're non-verbally not paying attention to them so keep those nonverbal cues in mind as well and by listening well speaking with each other not at each other and using good details and organization in our writing you will become not only more effective communicators but a better critical thinker so keep working on it thank you hi everybody i am laura shaw and i am teaching uni 110 for students at the downtown phoenix campus this semester um my characteristic of critical thinking is research and inquiry skills and these skills are basically competency in gathering information and evaluating information and in synthesizing information to provide evidence for a position you're arguing or for solving a problem that's in front of you so gathering information evaluating information and synthesizing information are the keys to research and inquiry skills um and if you're like me use these skills all the time i'm always trying to figure out what to watch next on netflix and so i gather a bunch of information i see what's been released on netflix so it's trending um sometimes i see what they actually recommend for me i talk to family and friends see what they're watching pay attention to my social media and see what's getting a lot of attention that way i also love to read critics i love to read reviews of movies and tv shows to see what's really good and worthwhile out there so i gather a bunch of information and then i evaluate it friends who have a really similar taste to me i tend to pay a lot of attention and feel like their information is going to be really credible and helpful to me as i decide what i want to watch next so i bring all the information together i evaluate it um and then synthesize it and come up with a decision um these are the same skills really that i've been using this past week as i've tried to figure out how to fill out my ballot um it's primary election time in arizona and so i'm trying to evaluate candidates i do things like go to candidate websites see what they have to say see what kind of information they've mailed out i read my state's voter guide to see what has been published there i look for organizations that i care about and see who they endorse and who they've worked with in the past i talk to people i know who work and are interested in state government to see what they think i um collect all kinds of information and everybody has a perspective everybody has a point of view and everybody has their own motives so you really have to be careful in evaluating not only what people say but why they're saying what they're saying so that you get a really good sense of what's credible information for you and what isn't and then somehow you bring it all together you synthesize it and make a decision sometimes our decisions aren't perfect but the goal is to make them as well informed as possible to make them as evidence-based so that you have confidence that the decision you've made is based on good solid information so research and inquiry skills really key to good critical thinking so now i want to talk to you about another critical component of critical thinking and it's called the flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity what does that mean it means being flexible and tolerant as things are uncertain as you research things you're going to find things on both sides and oftentimes they're going to seem on two total polar opposite things but as you start getting into the crux of it you need to remain open-minded so that you can take the information that you're getting from both sides and then pull it together and make your own opinion based on evidence the best example that we have of this currently is the global pandemic of cobit 19. when it began back in 2019 in december we knew very little about it as the last eight months have gone on as now it is august we have learned all sorts of new things and it has shifted how countries and individuals deal with things in the beginning we weren't sure how it spread so they said masks probably aren't a thing now they're coming out and saying masks will keep you a little bit safer right we've had to shift with those things that's what flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity is it's the ability to shift based on new information think about it when was the last time that you made a decision based on the three pieces of evidence that you had at that time and then learned something two days later and you're like oh well that changes everything right and then you go back and you redo your decision you make changes based on the new evidence and that is in a nutshell flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity hi debbie reuter williams here to talk about open-minded skepticism now at first glance it appears like these two concepts are at odds with each other they're conflicting open-minded means being completely receptive to new ideas being skeptical means being completely unaccepting of new ideas so how do we reconcile the conflict between the two they seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum how can you do both and it's important to not just be one or the other so if we're completely open-minded if we agree with everything anybody says then we don't really stand for anything and nobody can cut kind of get a read on who we are or what we believe in contrast if we're entirely skeptical it means we're an old crotchety foggy at the age of 18 or 20 because we never accept a new idea we only believe what we believe and that can never be changed so somehow we have to find the happy medium between being open-minded to new ideas and also skeptical of those ideas so i'm going to give you an example in my own life i was brought up by parents that thought white bread with bologna and processed cheese was a good nutritious lunch and for dinner every night we always had meat a starch and a little serving of vegetables well fast forward my daughter is a student at asu and took a course on eating animals and came home and said mom eating animals is wrong they're a bad source of protein and they have all these negative consequences for society at large and i was open to that idea and also skeptical i need my animal protein it's good for building strong bones but i read the book that she read for her class i did additional research on nutrition and sources of proteins and i found that i could get sufficient protein from plant sources as opposed to animal sources so i was skeptical of my own belief that only by eating meat could i have sufficient protein and i was open-minded to look at another view i hope that you can be receptive to areas in your life where you need to maybe question your cherished beliefs and be open-minded to new perspectives collaborative learning is one of the eight characteristics of critical thinking it's often thought of as an instructional method that teachers use in classrooms to get students to work together towards a common academic goal however it is also a really important personal skill that we use every day um it's listening and taking into account others points of view it's understanding the needs of others versus uh what we want and then coming up with a solution working together um as part of the lead faculty team we work together in a collaborative environment all the time to make sure you guys are getting the best experience and all of our classes are linked together and that there's common threads like critical thinking that you find throughout all of your courses um i hope that you take some time to think about different collaborative learning experiences that you've had and how you could have made them a little bit better by taking into account somebody else's point of view and as you move forward throughout the course of the semester i hope that this skill just continues to grow for you hi this is dr stuart rhoden and i'm one of your instructors in the lead program for uni 110 and the characteristic i want to talk about is attentive mindful and curious so to become attentive and mindful and curious we all know what those words mean in terms of being a critical thinker means that we are listening and that we are respectful and that we hopefully can gain to some sort of understanding of other people's lived experiences we spent so much time in high school being taught a certain way now that you're in college we want you to sort of become more open more of a lifelong learner more of a critical learner right question what you read question what people are saying in a very respectful way of course but understanding that those lived experiences and perspectives may be different from what yours is and so being curious is you know what types of questions do i ask who was the author what were they saying what were they trying to get across you know what was the intent right those kinds of things so an example of this in my own life is when i was sitting where you guys were as a first year student in college i wanted to become a lawyer right and i took you know law courses and politics and minored in philosophy and did all those types of things had internships in washington and at some point i decided that i would rather be a teacher and so being able to transition and pivot based on you know being a critical thinker and going to a liberal arts college gave me the ability to not have to worry about those kinds of things and being able to try and find the joy and the curiosity and why i wanted to be a lawyer and apply that to becoming a professor and doing the writings and you know talks and those types of things that professors do have a great semester and we'll see you soon take care bye hi i'm jennifer miller and i'm a lecturer of success courses i've been teaching with the program for about nine years and i love teaching all of our classes today i'm going to talk to you about the eighth characteristic of critical thinking and that is creative problem solving so what exactly is creative problem solving well it's a process and it's a set of mindsets and attributes so when we think about creative problem solving in other words it's a way of doing things and a way of thinking about things and looking at things when we try to solve a problem and we usually typically do this when the normal way of doing things hasn't been working so when conventional thinkings fail that's when we generally employ our creative problem-solving skills we want to look at a problem in new and different ways to be innovative so we want to get a fresh perspective and get those innovative and new solutions and that's how we and why we use creative problem solving so we really use all of our eight characteristics of critical thinking together and apply them when we're practicing creative problem solving it's kind of a nice way to tie everything together in this class so it is so important this concept of creative problem solving and it's a way that we use all of that research and collaboration and open-minded skepticism and all of those other critical thinking skills um in a way that's more active i think but again it's so important that if you are in the lead program not everyone is but if you are in the lead program we cover creative problem solving even in more depth in your second semester in your asu 121 class where you get to use your creative problem solving skills on a project that you direct and are in control of it's a really fun project so as we look at creative problem solving i think you're probably using it a lot in your own lives right now um this is a time of change for many people and so you're probably using a lot of your critical thinking and your creative problem-solving skills i'm particularly trying to be uh more active and get trying to exercise more but in the arizona heat one of my biggest challenges that i'm facing is not wanting to go outside to exercise and they tell you right i don't know if anybody has told you this yet get up really early to go exercise at 6 30 in the morning and number one i'm not going to get up at 6 30 in the morning to exercise and number two it's still darn hot at 6 30. so i've been using my creative problem solving skills to brainstorm different ways that i can exercise at different places you know if not the gym maybe going to the mall to walk although running through the mall is probably discouraged but trying to find and brainstorm different ways to solve my problem creatively that's what i've been trying to do so we can use creative problem solving skills throughout our lives but if i haven't given you enough yet to prove that my opinion is worth listening to i'm going to give you a statistic and that is 85 percent of policymakers say that students who excel at creative problem solvers will have higher earning jobs in the future so if nothing else using your learning and using your creative problem solving skills can help you get higher pay and grab in the future at least that's what the statistics say so if you aren't excited about this class creative problem solving and learning these eight characteristics of critical thinking i hope you are at the end now of this video um you are going to be able to use all of your critical thinking skills this semester in your school work and in your life so i look forward to hopefully seeing you around bye