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  Critical Reasoning: A User's Manual, v.4.0

  Jason Southworth and Chris Swoyer

  Teaching critical reasoning is difficult. So is learning to reason more carefully and accurately. The greatest challenge is teaching (and learning) skills in such a way that students can spontaneously apply them outside the classroom once the course is over (teaching people to apply skills in the classroom can be hard enough, but clearly isn’t a worthwhile goal in itself).

  We (the authors) have learned a good deal about these matters from the students who took courses using earlier drafts of this book, and from colleagues who’ve taught from it. But one key theme of this book is the importance of actually checking to see what the answers to complicated empirical questions are, rather than blithely assuming we know, and that applies to teaching critical reasoning as much as to anything else.

  One lesson is clear, though. Reasoning is a skill, and there is strong evidence that (like any skill) it can only be acquired with practice. It is important that students work to apply the concepts and principles in a wide range of situations, including situations that matter to them. It is equally important that those teaching critical reasoning design their assessments to model situations and cases where these skills will be of use in real life.

  Different routes through the book are possible. One of our colleagues covers virtually the entire book in a single semester. Most of us omit some chapters, however, and the book is designed to accommodate somewhat different courses. A more traditional course would spend a good deal of time on parts two and four (arguments and fallacies), whereas a less traditional course might omit fallacies altogether and focus more on cognitive biases or social aspects of reasoning. It is also possible to go into probability in more or less detail, although we are convinced that some familiarity with basic probabilistic and statistical concepts is extremely useful for much of the reasoning we commonly do. One can teach this without worrying about calculating a lot of probabilities; indeed, it is important for students to see how the basic concepts apply in cases where precise numbers are unavailable, i.e., in almost all cases they will encounter outside the classroom. Still, doing some calculations will deepen students’ grasp of the basic concepts. Sections at the end point interested students toward specific applications of the tools of this book to other areas of philosophical interest, and a brief introduction to formal logic is included to allow courses that combine both inductive and deductive logic to use a single text.

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  Discovering the Leader Within: Learning Leadership through Service (2nd Edition)

  Brent Goertzen, Seth D. Kastle, Kaley Klaus, and Justin Greenleaf

  Discovering the Leader Within: Learning Leadership through Service (2nd edition) is a resource guide for students participating in a service-learning course in leadership studies. More precisely, this workbook is designed to enhance the reflection and assessment components of students’ service-learning projects. Students are challenged to develop in all aspects of human development: cognitive, behavioral and affective domains. Students are challenged cognitively, in exploring the capacities of being knowledgeable about the leadership process; behaviorally, in making use of new skills to demonstrate their leadership abilities; and affectively, in examining one’s own attitudes and self-efficacy in affecting positive change for the common good.

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  Blown to Bits Project

  David Schmidt

  The book, Blown to Bits, uncovers the many ways that the new digital world has changed and is changing our whole environment. Some changes are incremental but others are more revolutionary. Some of the changes that we welcome are slowly eroding our privacy and are changing the rules of ownership. This book illuminates the complexities of these changes. I have attempted to capture the central points in selected chapters, and in some cases I have added new material or new examples to replace dated material. I picked chapters to summarize that address the following topics (and more). There are many pieces of data that exist about each of us that aggregators can piece together often because we willingly give it up to receive some service. Because of that we have little privacy left. Ownership of digitized content is being redefined legally because digital copies are as good as the original and because those copies are difficult to control. The change from an analog world to a digital world is revolutionary, and the social customs and laws are slow to adapt to the change. Encryption now is generally accepted by legislators because it is necessary for banking transactions and other commercial activity, but it gives rise to activities such as the dark web (example, the Silk Road). How does the technology behind the dark web work? The pervasive nature of digital images, digital text, GPS data, metadata, and the nature of software applications makes inadvertent disclosure of information almost impossible to control. How can laws be fashioned to control predatory behavior on the web? The supplementary materials I have created unpacks the chapters that focus on these issues. In addition I have added other materials useful for instructors who choose to use the book (some technical material, assignments and rubrics).