Although this web site is not the product of the project, it is hoped that this web site will prove to be a method of gathering information, pooling resources with other people interested in the same field and also to provide a resource for others and myself to use.
The Project
The Project is titled, 'the making of a questioning mind'. A product that AIDS in the grasping, of the critical thinking cognitive process in under graduate students It will be produced in conjunction with QSRB.
Why this Project?
I am interested in critical thinking for one major reason, my under graduate degree course only succeeded to generate more questions in my mind than it answered. The further one reads into a subject the more questions seem to arise. Indeed, my under graduate thesis, took apart all the current theories on it's particular field, synthesized and then criticized, the findings, the science and the inadequacies of those theories.
Quaternary Science Review Board
It is for this reason that myself and 3 of my colleagues from my undergraduate degree set up the quaternary science review board, whose aims are to challenge the confused and unclear picture that was presented and is taken as fact by many people. It is intended that QSRB will highlight the questions, which need answering in the field of quaternary science.
It
was once told me by a man whom I have great respect for, that 'if you come
out of university with only one thing, then that should be the ability to
critically analyze any situation or theory'.
This prject will be developed in conjunction with QSRB and It is hoped that
it will form a commercial product for this developing orginization.
Visit the QSRB Website at - http://www.qsrb.cjb.net
The Proposal
A commercial CD-ROM based product that 'teaches' critical thinking. Quaternary Science will form a strand throughout the product providing examples and a constant structure throughout.
Client & Users
The Client will be QSRB. And the users will be undergraduate science students, it may also have an application in 6th form education and some other peripheral areas of the education market, however these are not the main focus of the project.
Contents
As well as providing some background information about QSRB, the product will address the following components of critical thinking:
1. Why we need to question - looking at how questioning develops science, using examples tracking a theory from its embryo to the present time, showing how argumentative questioning leads to the development of theories.
2. How to question - the 'learning section' which will teach how to question, using examples showing how to deconstruct a theory, paper etc. what areas can be questioned and what is fact, or indeed can we question what is thought to be fact
3.
Student based work - an example of a theory or paper, in which the student
can put into practice what they have learned, then compare it with how and
what QSRB have questioned.