During a critical thinking session we look at our sources of information, how they can be graded and how we can gauge their credibility. We encourage students to question what they read and see on social media and show them that by just running a few simple checks and answering a few simple questions, which can help with checking credibility of a source.
We have a look at some of the common biases which can often lead us into believing suspect information. In particular we discuss expertise bias, anchoring and “the sample size of one” as some of the more common traps. Then we have a look at a couple of really useful analytical techniques, usually critical path analysis and the 5 Ws (and one H, Who, What, When, Where, Why and How), which covers it pretty well.
We cover these and the bias discussion is by going through some real examples he experienced and then we have a couple of exercises the students can do. If the students are familiar with these techniques then we also cover Cone of plausibility, analysis of competing hypothesis, centre of gravity analysis and many more.
