The first is the Critical Thinking Tutorial to teach the basics of critical thinking to your students. Most instructors have concluded that it works well for an organized approach to teach all aspects of critical thinking. It breaks down critical thinking into 28 skills and strategies; defines these skills and strategies and gives clear, helpful examples for each. It includes practice items to sharpen these skills and a test bank to help you evaluate your students. Like all College of DuPage products, the program is reliable, simple to use and looks great with fine multi-media designs using audio, video, graphics, and animation.

The Critical Thinking Tutorial lays the groundwork for the 2nd program, our new series in Critical Thinking Case Studies, the first six of which are now available, the newest being The Client with Schizoprenia. 

Like all our Case Studies under development (see below), any can be used alone or as an adjunct to the Critical Thinking Tutorial. The Case Study guides students through a case, asking them questions and giving them options that require use the critical thinking skills they have learned. Mastery learning is built into the case. Students receive immediate feedback about the effectiveness of their answer, and correct thinking is reinforced before they are given the next question. These case studies are formatted in two ways: They can be used by individual students or by you to facilitate group learning in your classroom. 

Individualized Instruction: In this modality, your students work at a computer, alone or with a partner. In addition to taking them through cases, challenging and building their critical thinking skills, the program allows you to give them the option of keeping "Thinking Notes." Students are asked to write why they chose a particular course of action regarding the case and the program prints these responses. These notes become the basis for you to help students improve their thinking and critical judgment. There is also an "Information Tutor" that serves as a resource of information the student can access to help in answering the questions. A "Critical Thinking Adviser" is included to serve as a guide on how to apply critical thinking in answering the question.

Classroom Instruction: This modality allows you, the instructor, to use multi-media presentations of the software in class to support your instruction. Graphics, audio, and type fonts are all scaled for clear projection in the classroom. To make it even more attractive, the operations of the program are simplified to be more suitable to the classroom setting, allowing you to work with your students more effectively.

Classroom Testing: As an added bonus, each case study comes with an instructor's manual that includes from 10-15 questions, not seen by students using the program. Use these high quality, critical thinking questions on your classroom tests to evaluate student outcomes regarding both content and critical thinking.

Case Studies Coming Soon 

• The Bi-Polar Client
• The Manic Depressive Client
• The Client with Prostatic Cancer
• The Client with Breast Cancer
• The Client with Spinal Cord Injury
• The Client with Fluid and Electrolyte Imbalance