Linda Carozza at Lcarozza@yorku.ca

Virtual office hours: Zoom will be used for virtual office hours. Further information will be made available in eClass.

The general purpose of all the Modes of Reasoning courses (MODR) is to equip students with critical thinking and reasoning skills, which are invaluable to academic studies, a professional career, and life generally.

This course is an introduction to a series of reasoning skills, concepts, and techniques from a multidisciplinary stance. With content from the fields of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and conflict resolution, students are guided to: read or listen to others' ideas with an engaged mind; think critically about those ideas; develop strong arguments and ideas of one's own; and, verbalize those ideas clearly and concisely, orally and in writing. We apply various theories and skills to the analysis of timely arguments in popular science, the legal realm, politics, and ethics (to name a few), that are found in the mass media (e.g. newspaper columns, blogs, advertisements, social media, documentary films, Ted Talks, etc.).

Students should leave this course with theoretical knowledge, practical skills (listed below), and general awareness about persuasion tactics used within our culture.

Technical requirements for taking the course: You will need to access eClass a few times each week throughout the course. This requires a higher-speed Internet connection. In addition, for webinars, extra workshops, and virtual office hours you will need a computer with a webcam and microphone, and/or a smart device with these features.

Here are some useful links for student computing information, resources and help:

Student Guide to Moodle

Zoom@YorkU Best Practices 

Zoom@YorkU User Reference Guide

Computing for Students Website

Student Guide to eLearning at York University

To determine Internet connection and speed, there are online tests, such as Speedtest, that can be run.]

Good Reasoning Matters (5th Ed.), by Groarke & Tindale*

Note: It needs to be the 5th edition.

All other material provied on eClass course site.

* This text will be available as a virtual rental through the course site. See the York University bookstore, or any book supplier, for a hard copy.

Participation – 10%

Quizzes – 25%

Argumentative Writing Assignment – 25%

Critical Analysis Project (this multi-part assignment involves team work) – 40%

More specific information about assignments will be provided in eClass.

Times and locations: This is an ONLINE course. There will be no in-person interactions or activities on campus. There will be webinars held throughout the course. The day/time will be determined by polling interested students. For students who cannot attend, these sessions will be recorded when possible.

Course policies

• Expected academic performance includes students not only completing assignments, but completing them on time.
• If you miss a quiz, for which you have 7 days to complete, you earn a zero grade. There will be a bonus quiz to replace any low or missed grades.

If you don’t participate during a required week, you don’t earn participation grades. There will be bonus participation opportunities to replace any missed participation opportunities.

To be successful in this course

• You must log on to eClass
• You should be completing coursework every week
• You should be taking your own notes when you review lecture material - always
• You should be taking your own notes when you read the course material - always
• Critical Thinking and Reasoning requires practice. The textbook has chapter exercises that you should be answering in order to hone your skills.
• For an updated and helpful website with tips and tools, for writing, time management, and other necessary tools and skills for university success, see: http://www.yorku.ca/spark/
• Take care of yourself. Balancing the academic, professional, family, personal, and other aspects of your life can be challenging at the best of times. Aim to create some balance in your life. You want to be healthy and rested to study and learn succssfully.

Regarding lecture content (e.g. videos, documents, etc.): students do not have

permission to duplicate, copy, and/or distribute content outside of the class. Doing so

violates copyright laws.

Regarding synchronous Zoom recordings: when webinars are recorded, students do not have permission to duplicate, copy, and/or distribute the recordings outside of the class. These acts can violate not only copyright laws but also FIPPA. All synchronous webinar recordings will be destroyed after the end of classes.