Academic Success Tip: Helping Students Engage in Critical Thinking, Media Literacy

Colleges and universities often encourage students to engage in healthy debate and expression on campus, but students report censoring their own ideas out of fear of hurting others.

A September 2023 survey by the constructive Dialogue Institute and More in Common found 94 percent of college students agree that individuals should listen to others with an open mind, including those with whom we disagree, but almost half (45 percent) of all students are afraid to express their opinions for fear of offending their peers.

After an academic year of heightened political discourse and campus protests, higher education practitioners are looking for ways to build students’ critical thinking, media literacy and constructive dialogue skills. A July 16 webinar hosted by the Association of College and University Educators brought together faculty and other higher ed professionals to create a classroom environment that opens up authentic discourse among learners.

Be prepared: When creating or implementing activities in the classroom, Teresa Nance, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Villanova University, invited faculty to consider five bes.

1. Be in relationship with students. Professors should seek to build connection with learners as early as the first day. This could take place through a written or recorded introduction that highlights details about the course, what it takes to succeed and personal elements about the faculty member, such as how they became interested in their field of study. This should be comfortable and not “cringey,” Nance advised.

2. Be aware of the types of constructive conversations that fit your subject matter. Not every course has ample opportunity to engage in full-class discussions, so finding ways to weave constructions across material, whether it’s a professor-led or small group discourse, is important.
3. Be familiar with constructive conversation skills. In addition to knowing what a constructive conversation looks like, faculty members should know the ingredients to create the environment, including active listening, asking questions, clarifying, paraphrasing, summarizing and managing conflicts.
4. Be creative in constructing a classroom environment. These discussions can take place in a formal, structured way to invite further understanding of the course materials or could take place implicitly in a professor’s teaching and modeling, such as how they small talk, how they respond to questions or how they engage in warm up activities with learners. 

5. Be ready to be wrong. Some days, this work may feel exhausting, and professors may wonder if it’s worth it, but “critical constructive conversations are a learned behavior,” Nance said, so professors should be prepared to fail, get feedback and try again.

Digging deeper: Constructive dialogue can be difficult for students who do not understand media literacy or critical thinking, because they are inclined to accept all information without as much discretion.

Based on research, we know critical thinking in academic work can be understood through four points, shared Louis Newman, professor of religious studies emeritus at Carleton College.

1. Exploring context. Investigating the historical context, the author’s perspectives and assumptions and the intended audience.  
2. Comparing alternatives. What are other conclusions that can be drawn from the results? How else could this theory be tested?
3. Weighing evidence. Gauging if facts are true, come from a credible and unbiased source, fully support the conclusion, and if there is other evidence not included by the author.  
4. Considering implications. Whom does this matter to, why does it matter and what are the practical implications of this work? 

Critical thinking in this manner can be applied across disciplines to all areas of study and help students build opinions and arguments in a way that centers facts.

Professors can build students’ media literacy skills through Mike Caufield’s SIFT approach, shared Felice Nudelman, president of Net Edge Training, a higher education consulting firm and former New York Times Company executive director of education.

SIFT stands for stop, investigate the source, find better coverage and trace claims and quotes to the original source. This process helps students develop analytical reasoning and dissect the information and how it could be pushing a person’s biases and agenda versus objective facts.

“The more tools we give to students, the more we give them a sense of agency,” Nudelman said. “The more they’re going to have a sense that they have a grip on this, they’re not just being bombarded [with information].”

One approach is to find several different news articles about the same event published by a variety of news outlets and have students analyze the word choice, phrasing, order of information and where it appeared in the publication or online to look at the biases present, Nudelman said.

Supporting student development: In addition to building students’ analytical skills, constructive conversations can build personal and professional abilities. To further hone these proficiencies, professors should:

• Remind students there is no one answer. Students often don’t want to say the wrong thing or ask the wrong question, so faculty members should work to build a classroom culture that allows students to ask questions and be uncertain in their responses.
• Encourage relationship building. Rather than inviting students to talk with one another only about contentious topics, professors should offer discussion opportunities among peers that have lower stakes, like where the best burger place is near campus, to help students get to know each other more deeply.
• Call out skill building. Critical thinking should be something highlighted on the syllabus as a learning goal in the course, that the course “isn’t only about mastering information—it’s about learning to think critically about it,” Newman says. During discussions, instructors can call out the skills students are learning or when a question models critical thinking, as well.  

Do you have an academic success tip that might help others encourage student success? Tell us about it.