Although it’s sometimes hard to define, critical thinking can make a big difference in a student’s college career.

Critical thinking was the topic at Thursday’s Faculty Development presentation as Craig Nelson, a biology professor at Indiana University, helped Eastern faculty understand what critical thinking really is.

The biggest problem addressed was the difficulty getting students to acquire critical thinking.

“Having high admission standards doesn’t change what colleagues feel about what is wrong with students,” Nelson said. “Most low grades are a result of irresponsible pedagoging, not broken students.”

Throughout the workshop, faculty and staff were asked to sketch different opinions on what their colleagues feel about critical thinking and even to make a fictional course that would help foster this concept.

Some of the course thoughts were to apply the concepts to real problems, use quantitative data for decisions, and connect and expand ideas.

“Sometimes you want to cram it all in,” said biology professor Bud Fischer. “I sometimes only plan out half of what could fill a semester and build upon that.”

Aside from being able to create their own courses, Nelson schooled the faculty on different thinking. He gave four modes of relevant thinking to undergraduate teaching.

One mode was called Sgt. Friday, which was the basic understanding that the student expected the teacher to let them know what they had to memorize. However, Nelson explained that the faculty can’t be expected to hand them the answers.

“The role of faculty is looked at as a gigantic, florescent yellow highlighter that will tell the students what to study and memorize in the book,” Nelson said. “But, how dare we contradict or even argue against the textbook because if we were that smart we would have written it.”

Nelson’s ability to mix humor and truth captivated his listeners and showed them some of the best techniques to build off of.

“This was one of the best faculty development lectures I have been to,” said Kathy Bower, associate geology/geography professor. “Dr. Nelson really laid it out nicely and gave us some good teaching methods.”

A second mode of thinking was described as Baskin Robbins. In this mode anything goes and students assume that any answers on some topics are mere opinions.

“The basic task here is to explicitly delineate and to help the students learn to use the forms of argumentation and the criteria used by our disciplines in deciding which ides to accept tentatively,” Nelson said.

The key teaching and learning tasks became comparison and teaching students the better and worse explanations to their uncertainty, Nelson said. From there, the students are able to state the comparisons and evidence for selecting the best choice.

At this point, students learn that not every opinion is equally good. This is a third mode of thinking called Teachers’ Games.

However, Nelson said the students can improve on critical thinking.

“They cannot effectively compare alternative paradigms, choose appropriate applications in complex situations or understand the interrelations, say, of science and public policy,” Nelson said.

The main points addressed teachers providing an effective classroom.

“Students need examples of adults visibly living their values,” he said. “We are asking students to become different people and it’s only fair somehow to clue them in.”