Our Last Posts: #3 - A Concept That Need Clarity

The concept that I would like to have more thorough explanation on is chapter 12 of our textbook. The whole chapter is on science and I didn’t really feel like it should have been a whole chapter of the book. I don’t know if anyone else felt this way but it felt out of place. I get some of the arguments and debate that arise because of the science community, but I don’t think I completely got the clear message about how it directly related to learning critical thinking concepts. I wish that I would have been able to relate the ideas in this chapter to critical thinking because it is what my major will deal with. I will use methodology, experiments, and hypothesis reasoning while in nursing school and once I start my career as a nurse. I just wish I had a better understanding of the main reason for the publisher inserting this chapter into a critical thinking textbook and the importance of it given the subject.

Our Last Posts: #1 - What have you learned in this course?

The cover of our textbook says, “critical thinking and logic skills for everyday life,” and that is exactly what I feel I have learned this semester. I feel like I have learned how to better communicate using reasoning so that my communication with others is rational and just better. I think that the concept I liked learning about most was how emotion really affects all daily communication. It is good to be able to put that concept into perspective as I finish my time at San Jose State. I think that students are affected by their emotions regularly because it is a sensitive time in life where stress, lack of sleep, and pressure set in. I think that if I can keep this concept with me, then I will be more successful. The aspect of this class that challenged me the most was working in groups for our projects. I grew in communicating with other to get the projects done well.

Our Last Week to Post: #2 - Likes/Dislikes

My favorite part of this class was how easy it is to communicate with our instructor and how consistent the course work is. We knew every that we would have 3 posts and 3 comments every week, a test every few weeks, and 3 group projects. Sticking with the syllabus so closely helped me plan easily and finish my work. My least favorite part of this class was the group projects. Because this is an online course, it was really difficult to get in touch with all the group members and meet up for 3 assignments. Students take online classes for a reason usually because they live out of town or have scheduling conflicts, which means that finding time to get together with a group is difficult. I did not like having a big portion of our grade rely on group work. Maybe if this was a real time course it would have been okay to do group projects in this fashion and weighted heavily, but I really did not care for that structure of our grade. Overall, I really liked this course.