“Students will learn various modes of inquiry through interdisciplinary curricula—problem-posing, investigating, conceptualizing—in order to become active, self-motivated, and empowered learners.”
The final goal of University Studies at Portland State University is stating that critical thinking provides greater insight into ones education. It involves thinking outside the box and analyzing more in depth. This means to look beyond the obvious. Asking the right questions to further clarify information or questioning something the teacher says helps to further analyze and offers the opportunity to seek deeper meaning out of ones education.
This goal is clearly executed in the Philosophy of Education paper from early October. In depth analysis and thinking critically were key concepts in putting together this essay. The subject of education and what it means never really came up in high school, but it had always been something I wanted to write about. This assignment gave me the opportunity to really go in depth and find a deeper meaning out of education. In this paper I asked questions to gain further insight into an idea and to better educate myself as well as the reader. This paper provided me great insight into education and its meaning. In my paper, I stated that education is constant and that by asking questions, critically thinking, and actively learning, the necessary tools are in place for living a more prosperous and mature life.
I feel that I put together a polished essay that clearly demonstrated the second goal of University Studies. I did an excellent job at displaying my understanding of the ideas we went over in class. The ideas of Colombo and Paulo Freire’s concepts of banking and problem posing were pieced together along with my own personal experiences in the education system to come up with my philosophy of education. What I did not do that hurt my grade was clearly display my thesis. My introductory paragraph had two key issues that took away from the flow of my paper. I began the paper with a definition from the dictionary for education, and then continued the paragraph without a concrete thesis statement. If I could go back, I would remove the definition and clearly implement a thesis statement that was supported throughout the entire body of the essay. My strength of understanding the concepts would have looked even better if they were supporting a clear thesis throughout the entire paper.
Critical thinking was a major factor in completing the research paper this term. My paper on Gerontology involved thinking critically, especially when trying to come up with a feasible thesis. This paper would have been fairly easy to type if I did not have to think outside the box and look beyond the obvious. By breaking my paper down into its core components, I was able to come up with an initial thesis that developed into a strong thesis at the conclusion of the paper. Critical thinking is important in providing great insights, too. By looking beyond the obvious, I gained more insight from my research. My rough draft did not go as in depth as my final draft, and this aided in the information I learned from the research. The process involved in therapeutic cloning is complex and involves many steps to come up with a workable body organ, for example. Getting stem cells from embryos is a controversial part of therapeutic cloning, but the benefits that come from these clones are beneficial in helping sick and dying people.
I feel like I made huge improvements from my initial draft the final product. This was due in large part to critical thinking. My draft was just that, a draft! By conducting more research, taking out unnecessary information that tended to be repetitive, and coming up with a strong, supportive thesis, the final outcome of my paper was made possible. I struggled with this at first, but I spent a great deal of time in improving the paper, titled “An Aging Society”. If I could go back, I would have completed a more polished rough draft so that I wouldn’t have had to spent so much time on improving the final draft. I would have conducted more reliable, stronger research that would have narrowed my thinking. My first draft was all over the place and was hard to follow. This was a major reason I had trouble improving my paper at first.
Just like the other two evident pieces of work for this University Studies goal, the Frankenstein Take Home Exam made me look beyond the obvious and think critically. Analyzing literature forces one to think outside the box. In the take home exam, we had to find passages that stood apart from the rest and provided great insight into the novel by Mary Shelly, Frankenstein. The exam was broken down into three sections, each forcing me to look at the novel from a different lens. This helped in providing great insight into who Mary Shelley was and how her novel manifested. Part I Section A focused on influences to Mary Shelley’s masterpiece and was followed up by themes running throughout her novel. This involved going back to the book and looking for important passages that provided insight into themes in the novel.
In looking for thematic passages, I was able to come across many key passages to the novel and discover the many themes that exist in Frankenstein. If it weren’t for the notes that I took while reading the novel and highlighting important passages, this portion of the assignment would have been fairly difficult. I did an excellent job at highlighting passages that I felt would be crucial after reading the novel. The notes I had on the sides of pages was also something I did particularly well. There is not much I could have done to improve this assignment, and my grade reflected this! There is always room for important though. This improvement could have been mad on Part I Section A. I could have conducted more background research on people and ideas that contributed to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. This was the weakest section of the take home exam, and having had more information to work off would have strengthened this section and the overall exam.
