Collaborating on Critical Thinking: The Team Critique

Abstract

Pedagogical aspirations in the 21st century are now centering on student satisfaction and workplace-readiness in addition to the traditional goal of excellence in individual student performance. Educational experts have identified increased peer and faculty interactivity and highly developed critical-thinking skills as essential to attaining these goals. The new pedagogical tool presented and explained here promises escalation in both synchronous and asynchronous peer interaction, accelerated development of critical-thinking skills, and opportunities for meaningful collaborative learning. The "Team Critique" is a multi-stage group activity/assignment that employs multiple aspects of critical thinking to create a jointly authored, peer-critiqued, research paper or team project that builds the specific skills most highly prized by key stakeholders in the enterprise of higher education.