Show #4: Critical Thinking in the Online Classroom - An Interview with Stephen Brookfield, Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt
In this podcast, Stephen D. Brookfield joins fellow Jossey-Bass authors Rena Palloff, Keith Pratt and Jonathan Finkelstein to discuss fostering critical thinking in the online classroom. The conversation will interest anyone looking for ways to help online learners improve their depth of understanding, ability to challenge or confirm assumptions, and openness to thinking critically. (And as a special bonus, music lovers will appreciate hearing how being in a band can teach us to model critical thinking.)
This podcast is a pre-cursor to the 2nd Annual OTL Conference Online to be held October 7-8, 2008, during which Brookfield will address this topic further as part of his online keynote address. All participants in the online conference receive their choice of three books in the Online Teaching and Learning Series of guide books.
Dr. Stephen D. Brookfield is Distinguished University Professor at the University of St. Thomas, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has written ten books on adult learning, teaching, critical thinking, discussion methods and critical theory. Drs. Palloff and Pratt are presenters and co-chairs of the conference, and Jonathan Finkelstein will be presenting and moderating as well.
A 
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
As a graduate of Capella University and now as an Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks teaching both face to face and online courses, I am very interested in online learning for adult learners. I would love to hear more about teaching the same class in two formats in the same semester and how students in both formats might benefit from collaborating with each other.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Kia ora tatou!
The speakers highlighted a real issue in relation to fostering critical thinking skills, never mind introducing the ideas associated. That was to do with openness, that’s so important.
This is a huge problem, even in a classroom environment. The put downs that occur, in the classroom, in the committee room, in the staff room, in the family lounge and the playground are all factors that modify the way critical thinking is learned by those potential exponents of it.
Critical thinking is not often fostered - in ANY community. I believe that fostering it online is great and should be pursued. But let’s walk-the-talk when it comes to the classroom, the committee room, the staff room, and perhaps critical thinking skills may also be fostered in the family lounge and in the playground too.
Ka kite
from Middle-earth
September 27th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Stephen, you and I were in virtual contact some fifteen years ago. I think we sing from the same hymn sheet.
I worry now about the emphasis here on teaching and inputs online, and not on facilitation.
I am currently working on helping Taiwaneses students and teachers of EFL to develop critical thinking. The key to this, I suggest, is the frank and purely constructive tutor/student relationship which is possible in the virtual environment, and which features unanswered questions, unjustified assumptions, and unconsidered implications..
Have you any thoughts on that?
Yours aye
John
September 30th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
[…] strategies to pursue a deeper undersatnding and/or reflection in issues. This podcast discusses critical thinking in the online classroom and touches on a number of valid points for both us as students and educators in the digital […]