Critical Thinking: How Questioning Helps
Chose one of the following scenarios:
• You are a member of a group working on a class project. The group members are enthusiastic about the project and arrange a meeting time to begin planning. You forget to mark your calendar and miss the meeting. The group posts a summary of the meeting with assignments and deadlines for the project. You apologize to the group and agree to complete the topic research for the project. You realize you have a paper due in another course on the same day that your research is due, and you concentrate most of your time on your individual assignment. The paper takes longer than you thought, and you are unable to conduct research for the group project by the deadline. You feel bad about this and do not respond to inquiries from group members. You post a message to the group explaining you are having computer problems. The group expresses their empathy and proceeds without you, completing and submitting the project with your name included.
• A position opens in your department at work. You recommend to a coworker and friend in another department that she should apply. You previously consulted with this person on small projects, and she appears knowledgeable and responsible. In fact, you became friends through these work contacts. Your friend appreciates your recommendation and arranges a meeting to ask you more details about the work done by your department. The meeting is productive, and your friend takes notes to help with the application process. Your friend stops by your desk a few days later to thank you for your help, because the application was long and detailed. She confides that some of the information she included on the application is not entirely accurate. Some of her work experience did not match the job requirements and needed to be reworded for a better fit. Your friend thanks you again and says, “I hope we’ll be working together soon!”
Part A: Write five questions you need to ask yourself to help you think
• You are a member of a group working on a class project. The group members are enthusiastic about the project and arrange a meeting time to begin planning. You forget to mark your calendar and miss the meeting. The group posts a summary of the meeting with assignments and deadlines for the project. You apologize to the group and agree to complete the topic research for the project. You realize you have a paper due in another course on the same day that your research is due, and you concentrate most of your time on your individual assignment. The paper takes longer than you thought, and you are unable to conduct research for the group project by the deadline. You feel bad about this and do not respond to inquiries from group members. You post a message to the group explaining you are having computer problems. The group expresses their empathy and proceeds without you, completing and submitting the project with your name included.
• A position opens in your department at work. You recommend to a coworker and friend in another department that she should apply. You previously consulted with this person on small projects, and she appears knowledgeable and responsible. In fact, you became friends through these work contacts. Your friend appreciates your recommendation and arranges a meeting to ask you more details about the work done by your department. The meeting is productive, and your friend takes notes to help with the application process. Your friend stops by your desk a few days later to thank you for your help, because the application was long and detailed. She confides that some of the information she included on the application is not entirely accurate. Some of her work experience did not match the job requirements and needed to be reworded for a better fit. Your friend thanks you again and says, “I hope we’ll be working together soon!”
Part A: Write five questions you need to ask yourself to help you think