Reasoning about Reasoning: A Course Project

A course project for a sophomore-/junior-level course in thinking, reasoning, and decision making is described. Students in the course observe and describe the reasoning style of a partner from the class on four different tasks (e.g., geometric analogies and moral dilemmas). Then, they compare the performance across the four tasks to develop an argument about how many distinct kinds of reasoning they have observed in their partner. The assignment is designed to illustrate course material on theories and models of reasoning in concrete ways. Another and more important objective is to elicit from students a degree of critical thinking and creativity as they develop their own models and conclusions.