Critical Thinking Environments for Science Education

We have developed a range of critical thinking environments for science education that span several academic content areas, including human biology, geology and forestry. All environments share a methodology, infrastructure and sets of assumptions and tools, which allows them to leverage from the accomplishments and intuitions of the others. These tutors support a student on the Web to be active and engaged, track that student’s critical thinking and reason about her knowledge and its own teaching strategies. An Inquiry Notebook provides a way to sort, filter and categorize data and justifications and an Argument Editor supports argument formation. Students drag and drop evidence to support or refute each argument. A Coach provides helpful feedback guided by a database of expert rules, which create the basis for the content-specific analysis of the student’s argument.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: AIED
• Authors: Beverly Park Woolf, Tom Murray, David Marshall, Toby Dragon, Kevin Kohler, Matthew Mattingly, Merle Bruno, Dan Murray, Jim Sammons
• Keywords: AIED 2005, Artificial Intelligence, Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking Environments, Editor Supports Argument