Course Instructor Contact: 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 weekly 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 a BLENDED course. We meet on campus Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. There will also be content on eClass outside of class time, as this is an ACCELERATED course.

This is a blended course – lectures will be both in the classroom and online; participation will take place in the classroom on Tuesdays; assignments, office hours, and additional webinars will be facilitated online (via eClass and Zoom). If you cannot attend class on campus, you should enrol in a course that doesn’t expect and require attendance.

• The course will go live on Thursday, September 7. Log in to e-Class for the detailed syllabus, schedule, and other course documents on this date.
• We will meet in the classroom on Tuesday, September 12 at 11:30 a.m. for the first class.

Course policies

• Expected academic performance includes students not only completing assignments, but completing them on time. There are two types of assessments that do not have make-up assignments:
• 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 a bonus participation opportunity to replace a missed participation assignment.

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.