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INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING

Instructor Information:
Simran Khanna
Email: simran.khanna@ashoka.edu.in

Peer Tutor Information:

Ananya Madan
Email: ananya.madan_asp25@ashoka.edu.in

Classroom: AC02-101

Class Meeting times:


Wednesday & Friday: 3:00 PM

Office Hours:

Contact Hours:
● Classroom instruction: 2 seminars of 90 minutes each (3 hours a week).
● Three 1-on-1 meetings with the Instructor over the course of the semester.
● Two 1-on-1 meetings with the Peer Tutor over the course of the semester.

Overview:
The Introduction to Critical Thinking offers you different pathways to develop your
habits of thinking and communication through reading, writing and research. It
considers these as essential habits that can be strengthened through repetition. The
aim of this course is to expose you to source materials and themes that will provoke you
to think deeply, ask questions that extend and enrich your understanding, and use
writing as a means of making sense of the world. By the close of the course, you will
have a keener sense of your own challenges and strengths as a writer and student, and a
more robust sense of what it means to belong to a knowledge community constituted
by your peers.
Learning Outcomes:

Reading Writing Research Communication

1. Breaking down 1. Developing the 1. Narrowing 1. Aiming for


texts into craft of outlining, down a curiosity confidence, clarity,
identifiable parts. revising, editing into a question coherence in
speaking
2. Making patterns 2. Applying form, 2. Identifying
and connections voice, style, tone credible sources 2. Practising and
across texts to affect writing for study harnessing audience
engagement
3. Building reading 3. Developing 3. Reflecting on
stamina and the logical, coherent, method and 3. Developing active
ability to select structured writing organising the and respectful
texts research process listening to others
4. Producing
4. Understanding different kinds of 4. Handling 4. Engaging
context, genre and writing (narrative, multiple sources meaningfully with
source material argumentative or an archive ongoing discussions
etc)

Requirements (Reading List and other materials):


You do not need to have any specific kind of training in order to do an ICT course. Nor
is any ICT course geared towards preparing you specifically for a career in a particular
subject or field. Rather, you can expect it to guide you in transition out of how you
approached academic work in school to how you might approach it in a university
setting, and to sharpen your understanding of what it means to be critical, questioning
and deliberate in your approach to the world.

ICT is writing-intensive. You can expect to work on longer assignments (the Mid-Term
and the End-Term essays) over multiple rounds of feedback, as well as shorter
assignments through the semester. You will also need to rehearse regular habits of
reading (of academic texts and wider materials) and responding (to prompts, or given
materials). These will be specified on a weekly basis.

Finally, as the ICT is a small cohort-oriented course, you can expect it to have a strong
participation and interaction component, and can expect to work on projects both
individually and in collaboration with your coursemates.

Assessment:
The ICT will be graded on a number of elements. Your final assessment will account for
your participation and performance in writing and non-writing components, and in
formative work (building towards a bigger piece, or continuing a specific ‘habit’) and
summative work (producing a final output). The components are below:

1. Participation (in class discussions/ activities, meetings with instructor and peer
tutor, creating weekly content for our Instagram page)- 30%
2. Mid-term Assignment (800-1000 words) involving the synthesis of multiple
sources- 20%
3. Presentation- 20%
4. End-term Academic Essay (1500 - 2500 words) - 30%

A standard Ashoka rubric will be used in your eventual ICT grade, wherein the highest
possible grade is ‘A’ and the lowest possible grade is ‘F’. In general, grades in the ‘A’
range demonstrate that you have consistently exceeded the expectations of the course;
grades in the ‘B’ range indicate that you have met the expectations for the course;
grades in the ‘C’ range and below, demonstrate that you have fallen short of the
expectations for this course.

Attendance Policy:
For this course, you are allowed three unexcused absences (for which you do not need
permission from the instructor) and two excused absences (for which you do need
permission from the instructor). The penalty for any absence beyond these five will be
decided by the ICT instructor on a case-by-case basis. Please note that a consistent
pattern of non-attendance may include discretionary penalties such as grade cuts.
If you are absent, the responsibility for making up for what has been missed -- by
looking at class notes and/or speaking to classmates -- is yours. The responsibility for
finding out about any homework that has been set for future classes is yours too.

Theme:
Modelled along the theme of “Being Human in the Age of Technology”, the course
material will encourage students to describe and question the different aspects of being
human such as creativity, embodiment, emotions, and choice in the context of AI tools,
social media platforms, e-commerce websites etc. We will engage in discussions about
the relationship between being human and technology. Does technology hinder or help
us in being human? Given that we play the dual role of subject and scholar, the lessons
will teach us how to draw from our personal experiences to build our opinions about
these questions.

Course Structure:
Please note that the structure detailed below is subject to change. Read it to gain a
broad idea of the type of discussions you will be engaging in during the course of the
semester.

THEME: BEING HUMAN IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY

WEEK MODULE/ SUB-THEME

1 Introductions

2 What does it mean to be human?

3 What’s human about technology?

4 The Artful Species: AI art & Human Creativity

5 Writer's Workshop: Picking Topics & Conducting Research

6 Are human emotions the final frontier?

MID-TERM BREAK

7 The Social Algorithm: Relationships & Technology

8 Does the body “matter”?


9 Writer's Workshop: Citations

10 Algorithmic Coercion: Does choice exist?

11 Writer's Workshop: Drafting Essays

12 Digital Apathy: How do we respond to the pain of others?

13 Presentation Week

READING WEEK

Group Agreement:
● Read the assigned texts. You don’t have to understand all the arguments. We can
make sense of them together.
● Check in with the instructor and peer tutor during seminars and office hours.
● Don’t hesitate to ask questions or seek clarifications.
● Try out ideas. They don’t always need to be fully formed.
● Hold space and silence for people who need a moment to speak.
● Help each other to build ideas both in and outside of the seminars.
● Debate with each other respectfully: check back, ask questions and engage with
different perspectives.

Email Guidelines:
● Allow me 48 hours to respond to your emails. Please use the same time frame if
an email is directed to you.
● Use your official Ashoka email ID for all correspondence.
● Cross check your reading list, assignment sheet and inbox for information. They
may already have the answers you are seeking.

Dishonesty Policy:
● Academic dishonesty is cheating of any kind, including misrepresenting one’s
own work, taking credit for the work of others, and the fabrication of
information.
● Plagiarism is a kind of academic dishonesty including but not limited to:
submitting the work of others as your own (even if with minor changes), the
absence of adequate citations, multiple submissions of the same work without
permission.
● Anyone found guilty of academic dishonesty will be referred to the Office of
Academic Affairs and may be liable for punishment, such as an “F” for the work
in question or the whole course.
● Refer to this document for more information on Ashoka’s policy on plagiarism
and academic dishonesty:
https://my.ashoka.edu.in/SIS/UploadedFile/OrientationMaterial/Policies_1b3129
36-8ec3-4aae-bcc8-3bbf03b57d6e.pdf

Deadlines:
● Assignments submitted after the deadline has passed will count as late.
● Late work will result in a grade cut.
● Requests for extensions must be submitted four days prior to the deadline.
Please note that each student has a buffer of 100 hours in total they can avail
towards extensions across the semester. Exceeding the buffer time will count as a
late submission.
● An absence does not result in a waiver of any assignment deadlines which fall on
the day. Assignment deadlines will still be enforced unless the student has made
prior arrangements with the instructor.

ChatGPT policy:

● You’re allowed to use AI tools for research purposes, granted that you
flag how the tools have been used in a research note at the beginning of
your assignment. However, please note that these tools aren’t always
accurate and can result in producing sub-par research.
● Reproducing work written solely by AI tools will be penalised by grade
cuts. It will count as plagiarism.
● The grading rubric will privilege your ideas and voice over style.

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