Critical Thinking
Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com
This is a complete course: fifteen instructional weeks and a finals week, every student component, built with The Course Maker and ready to import. Weeks are relative (Week 1 to Week 16); you set the dates when you import it. Browse the whole thing below. Click any piece to read it in full, then click back to return here.
Nothing here is locked behind a signup. The course is the proof.
Download this course
This course is free, complete, and evergreen, and it is yours to keep; free downloads run through June 30, 2028. Students pay $0 for course materials: the readings and videos are links to freely available resources.
Pick the number of instructional weeks in your term; exam weeks sit on top of them. An edition marked “coming soon” is not built yet: asking for it tells us to build it, and we email you when it is ready.
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Enter your email address and we will let you know when this edition of the Critical Thinking course is ready to download, as a zip with the course cartridge (.imscc) and the instructor pack. No account and no password.
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What the paid build adds
This sample is complete and yours to keep. A paid build is the same course made yours in the ways a download cannot be:
- Every date set to your term and your breaks, and re-paced to a second campus calendar at no extra charge.
- Your syllabus, your policies, and your outline of record in the build, with an alignment report that shows which component addresses each objective and SLO, and a Universal design for learning section drawn from the course's own data.
- Your name on every page as the course's creator.
- Kept current every term: fresh assessment variants, every link re-checked and the dead ones replaced, and the subject brought up to date where it has moved.
- The full instructor pack: answer keys and worked solutions, the alignment report, and the UDL map.
- A record for your college's file: the design attestation, a disclosure statement for every edition, and what changed at the end of each term.
Included in every course
ChapterRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Slide deck with speaker notesRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a slide deck with speaker notes, a chapter to read, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Captioned video linksRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — captioned videos, a chapter to read, and a slide deck with speaker notes — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee. We link videos only when a caption track exists (from the creator or generated automatically), and we never host them.
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Policies, schedule, and grading
Assignment groups & weights
Configured in the export — the gradebook is set the moment the course is imported.
| Assignment group | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tutorials & Practice | 10% | |
| Quizzes | 10% | |
| Workshops | 20% | |
| Assignments | 25% | |
| Discussions | 15% | |
| Exams | 20% | |
| Total | 100% | Letter Standard |
What students will be able to do
Identify claims and arguments in everyday and academic passages, distinguishing arguments from explanations, reports, and unsupported assertions, and locate premises and conclusions with and without indicator words.
Analyze an argument by putting it in standard form, supplying unstated premises under the principle of charity, and mapping how its premises, objections, and replies connect, described in words.
Evaluate deductive reasoning: distinguish deductive from inductive arguments, apply validity, soundness, strength, and cogency, use the counterexample method, recognize the valid conditional forms and the two formal fallacies, state necessary and sufficient conditions, and test categorical syllogisms with Venn diagrams.
Explain how language shapes reasoning through definitions, vagueness, ambiguity, equivocation, and loaded wording, and identify the common informal fallacies of relevance and presumption while distinguishing a fallacy from a false premise and from legitimate criticism.
Evaluate inductive reasoning: judge generalizations by the size and representativeness of their samples, test arguments from analogy, and assess causal claims for confounding factors, reverse causation, and coincidence.
Reason accurately with numbers in public claims: separate percentages from percentage points and relative from absolute risk, work base-rate problems in natural frequencies, and detect misleading graphs.
Evaluate sources and evidence for credibility and relevant expertise, trace claims to their origins, check what independent sources say about a source, and detect out-of-context and AI-generated misinformation.
Assess scientific reasoning and one's own thinking: apply testability, controls, and inference to the best explanation, recognize warning signs of pseudoscience, and identify confirmation bias, availability, anchoring, motivated reasoning, and overconfidence, using concrete debiasing habits.
Reason about values and construct an original argument: separate the value premise from the factual premise in a moral argument, present ethical frameworks evenhandedly, state the opposing view at its strongest, and build and defend a well-supported argument with its strongest objection and a reply.
Argument analysis and evaluation — reconstruct an argument in standard form or as a map and evaluate it with the test that fits it (validity and a counterexample, a fallacy check, a sampling or causal check, a base-rate or risk table), stating the verdict in one plain sentence.
Reasoned argument and intellectual integrity — build and defend an original argument that states the strongest opposing view fairly, supports every factual claim with a checked source, and verifies AI output before relying on it.
How this course is built — read this first
Every teaching module carries the same set, in the order a student meets it: a Start Here overview, the chapter (the primary reading), the lecture (titled “Lecture: <module title>”), the slide deck with speaker notes, readings & resources (links only), the lecture tutorial and practice exercises worked with an AI tutor, the quiz, the discussion and the assignment, and the weekly Argument Workshop. Exams: the midterm in Week 8 and the final in Week 16, a finals week with no module.
The discussion and the assignment each ship in both formats: the adaptive version is the published, graded item, and its traditional alternative (no AI) is a separate item that ships unpublished beside it. An instructor who prefers the traditional format publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one.
What you see here is every student page. The instructor pack (answer keys and worked solutions, rubric calibration, image prompts, audio-brief scripts, and the alignment report) ships only in the download, never on this site.
Discussions & assignments: both formats in every module
Same learning objective either way; what changes is how the work happens.
Work it through with an approved chatbot
The student does the work in a guided conversation with an approved chatbot, using a copy-paste prompt the course provides. For a discussion, the AI is a Socratic partner that challenges their thinking and never writes the post. For an assignment, the AI is a coach: it asks questions, checks the reasoning shown, and waits for the student to revise. The student submits the chat link with the required summary or report.
The familiar way, one click away
The student does the work themselves and submits it, and the instructor grades it against the rubric. No AI required. It ships unpublished, opening with a one-line note to the instructor; publish it instead of the adaptive version if you prefer.
Every week, every component
Each week is a heading; every component under it links to the full student page. Week 8 is a teaching module that also carries the midterm bundle; Week 16 is the finals week, with the final exam bundle and no module.
What Critical Thinking Is: Claims, Arguments & Explanations
Analyzing Arguments
Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
Conditionals and Deductive Forms
Categorical Reasoning
Language and Meaning
Fallacies of Relevance
Midterm Review & Exam
The midterm exam bundle