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How to Make Your Course Focus on Thinking Processes

• Quotes to Make You Think
  • A person's thoughts are like water in a deep well. But someone with insight can draw
    them out. Proverbs 20:5, TEV
  • It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers,
    and not mere reflectors of other men's thoughts. E. White, Education, 17
  • The education that consists in the training of the memory, tending to discourage
    independent thought, has a moral bearing which is too little appreciated. As the student
    sacrifices the power to reason and judge for himself, he becomes incapable of
    discriminating between truth and error, and falls an easy prey to deception. He is easily
    led to follow tradition and custom. E. White, Education, 230
  • For ages education has had to do chiefly with the memory. This faculty has been taxed
    to the utmost, while the other mental powers have not been correspondingly developed.
    Students have spent their time in laboriously crowding the mind with knowledge, very
    little of which could be utilized.
    E. White, Education, 230
• Design questions that stimulate higher levels of interaction and thinking.

Additional Readings

• The Web: Design for Active Learning "This handbook will present the idea of interactivity as
  it applies to a cohesive design including high interface, content, and instructional design."
  Includes a section on "Learning Activities that Inspire Critical Thinking."
• Technology as Cognitive Tools: Learners as Designers "This short paper is about the
  application of technologies, primarily computers, as cognitive learning tools rather than as
  instructional media. I will argue that technologies ... afford the most meaningful thinking when
  used as tools."
• Learning in Hyperspace "The acquisition of wisdom from knowledge requires practice in the
  judicious application of that knowledge in the personal and social context in which the student
  acts."
• Active & Cooperative Learning in the College A listing and description of very specific
  activities that could be adapted for online learning.
• Web-Enhanced Learning Environment Strategies for Classroom Teachers "This paper
  presents a model for conceptualizing the components of the WWW and merges resources
  with six sound pedagogical classroom practices. Six Web-enhanced learning environment
  strategies result from this merger."
• Data in the Classroom "The types and order of questions teachers ask when dealing with
  these organized bodies of knowledge are critical to the success of the lesson. Questions are
  a powerful tool in teaching and carefully planned and worded questions can determine the
  effectiveness of instruction."