Group Project Paper

One of the biggest challenges to your critical thinking comes when you must work as part of a group to reach an agreement on a pitch you are making collectively. You must take into account your own FBIs and learn to negotiate with the FBIs of your fellow group members, take into account the F&P concepts and points of view that are important to each member's individual discipline, and plan and deliver a successful pitch to an audience that may or may not feel like cooperating with you on that day. If you CAN work together successfully, there's a very good chance you are mastering the important concepts this class tries to teach you. And that's a Good Thing.

So here's your task. I am going to break your class into groups, roughly by related or relevant disciplines. Each group will be assigned a section of Wilson's The Future of Life, our non-fiction book. Your job, on your assigned day, is to conduct 45 minutes of class in which you get the class to look at the critical thinking Wilson is displaying in your section. Since you have similar disciplines, your points of view will (hopefully) be pretty similar, but remember that your classmates' points of view may NOT be the same as yours, and design your presentation accordingly.

Your group will have to collaborate effectively to pull this off, and if you have FBIs about doing oral presentations, you'll have to work with those individually and collectively. You may want to work together in a subgroup on our Facebook page, or use Google sites or Google Groups as a way of sharing information when you can't meet face-to-face. I'll try to leave some class time where you can work together, but there won't be a lot of opportunity for that, I'm afraid, so you'll have to work "smart" to succeed.

Everybody in the group must participate in delivering the presentation, though not everyone has to talk. You may choose how you want the time to go--it can be question and answer, discussion, game playing, discussion of videos, classroom theatre--it's up to your group to decide how you want to make your pitch and engage your audience. (Remember that the "sequence of talking heads showing PowerPoint slides" is generally considered the LEAST engaging kind of oral presentation.) Again, assume we have all read the chapter and know what Wilson has said; your job is to take us "behind the thinking," and expose how Wilson is making his pitch, how he's appealing to readers, and how well  you think the appeal is working. In past classes we've taken quizzes, played Jeopardy!, Pictionary, Go Fish!, and individualized games, watched videos, listened to students rap, watched skits, engaged in question and answer sessions and debates, and made arts and crafts--it's totally up to your group how you want to engage us.

THEN each group member will write a paper that analyzes and evaluates your group's efforts: in other words, a standards check. How well did you use what you've been learning about critical thinking to make the group work well? Which particular elements did you use? Where did you fall short? How did you use critical thinking to collaborate? How did the presentation go? If the audience didn't cooperate, how did you "cover" and adapt? Apply the CAIR standards to your group's efforts and write this up in a 5-8 page paper with a Works Cited page that you submit to www.turnitin.com by the assigned due date for your group. DO NOT JUST NARRATE "THIS IS WHAT WE DID AND WHY." PERFORM A STANDARDS CHECK ON HOW WELL YOU SUCCEEDED IN ACHIEVING YOUR PURPOSE, COMPLETE WITH EVALUATIVE THESIS AND SEE-IT SUPPORT. You may want to look at Sylvia Plath's paper as an example of a good standards check for this assignment.

Bring your creativity as well as your critical skills to this project; it will really pay off for you! I expect you to use good critical thinking skills in planning, developing, executing, and assessing this presentation. Show us what you've got!