Topic Summary Project Instructions and Worksheet
In this assignment, you will work toward achieving the following course learning outcome: Evaluate claims using relevant evidence that supports a conclusion.
Throughout the course, you have addressed a topic of interest that you chose, and you applied many critical thinking concepts that you have studied. In Week 1, you learned that there are a variety of ways to define critical thinking. Ultimately, they all relate to considering a claim, evaluating evidence, and coming to a well-reasoned conclusion.
• The claim relates to what you believe or what you are asked to believe.
• The evidence comes in many forms (research, expert opinion, experience, etc.) and is necessary to support the claim. Evaluating evidence is a necessary part of critical thinking, and assumptions and biases arise when making claims and seeking evidence.
• Ultimately, you reach a conclusion which allows you to confidently argue a claim and take action as appropriate.
Below is a quick summary of your work on your topic throughout the course. You may find it helpful to paste in notes about the work you did in each week below each bullet point. You may opt to do this as you complete your work each week or when you begin to work on this project early in Week 7. This is Step 1.
• In Week 1, you selected a topic and located an article or clip.
Topic is Emotional health
• In Week 2, you identified thinking errors thinking error related to the issue and considered how to apply inductive and deductive reasoning to it.
Thinking errors were personalization and blaming myself for specific events
• In Week 3, you identified possible research questions related to your topic: one that inferred causation and one that inferred correlation. You also selected a type of scientific research to use to explore the topic.
Pseudoscience project
• In Week 5, you located an additional resource to help you with the topic and determined if it met CARE evaluation standards.
Care project
• In Week 6, you considered how to persuade people to take action along the lines of your belief as it relates to the topic, and you consider related judgment errors.
Judgement errors
• In Week 4 and this week (Week 7), you were not required to tie your work to your topic, and you had the option to relate your topic to cognitive errors, thinking errors, and/or superstition.
With this quick review in mind, in this assignment, you will write a short paper following the next steps. Include headings in your paper so the reader (your instructor) is clear that you are following each step.
Step 2 – Summary: Use your best organizational and writing skills to summarize all of your work related to the topic beginning with your choice of a potentially controversial topic in Week 1.
Step 3 – Claim: Explain the claim (conclusion or argument) you would like to make regarding this topic. Moving forward, what action would you like to take and/or encourage others to take?
Step 4 – Evidence: Describe the additional evidence you need in order to support your claim.
Step 5 – Gathering Evidence: Explain how you will gather the evidence needed to support your claim.
Step 6 – Supporting your Claim: Describe challenges you may face in supporting your claim and persuading others to do so. Hint: some of the challenges may be thinking errors.
Step 7 – Formatting: Following the formatting requirements:
• The length should be 2-3 pages minimum.
• This is an academic paper written in your own words.
• Double-space with 1 inch margins on all sides, and use a 12 point clear font (Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri are good choices. These instructions are Calibri.
• If you would like additional support with your writing, visit Brandman’s Online Writing Community by clicking on “Writing Help” in the red navigation buttons on the left.
Step 8: Begin your paper below on page 3 so you can easily refer to the instructions.
Step 9: Upload your paper.
