critical thinking course harvard

Structure and Function of Argument: Introduction to Critical Thinking

Explore the underlying structures of everyday arguments and develop the tools to communicate effectively..

You will build a toolkit to engage in more constructive conversations and to actively listen to better understand others’ points of view.

What You'll Learn

Life is full of arguments—you encounter them everyday in your social and professional circles. From casually discussing what to have for dinner tonight with your family to passionately debating the best candidate to vote for in the upcoming election, arguments are a method to better educate ourselves and understand others.

All arguments share an underlying mapping structure that backs a main claim with supporting reasons, sometimes including counterpoints to anticipated objections. In order to present an argument that will clearly communicate your perspective, you must first understand the basic structure of any argument and develop your logic and critical thinking skills.

In Structure and Function of Argument: Introduction to Critical Thinking, you will engage in dynamic practice exercises to develop the ability to recognize, analyze, and construct arguments you encounter on a daily basis. You will consider the structure of an argument, focusing on the underlying organization of claims and reasoning. You will determine if the reasons support the author or speaker’s main claim, build well-constructed responses, and grow your overall English language skills. You will also test your listening skills by recognizing how things like logical fallacies, conflicting points of view, and controversial subjects can impact effective communication.

Using a tool called “argument mapping,” you will visually diagram the structure of an argument to identify how reasons connect and function in an argument. You will then apply your learnings and test your own arguments using this tool – allowing you to gauge the overall quality of your arguments and take steps to make them stronger.

By the end of the course, you will have built a toolkit to engage in more constructive conversations and to actively listen to better understand others’ points of view.

The course will be delivered via  edX  and connect learners around the world. By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explore the shape and structures of arguments you encounter daily, helping improve your overall communication and English language skills.
• Learn how to visually map an argument, analyzing, evaluating, and optimizing the strength of your argument along the way.
• Become a better listener by seeking to understand others’ perspectives and engaging in respectful discussion and disagreement.
• Experiment with philosophical thought experiments to build your argumentation skills. 
• Build the tools to improve your logical reasoning and emotional intelligence by understanding how conflict and tension can impact communication.
• Improve your ability to think critically, seek to understand underlying assumptions, and identify biases – allowing you to create more compassionate, compelling, and convincing arguments.
• Learn how to regulate your emotional response to differing points of view, expressing genuine curiosity and inquisitiveness as a means to learn from the other party.

Your Instructor

Edward J. Hall is the Norman E. Vuilleumier Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University and works on a range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology that overlap with philosophy of science. He believes that philosophical discourse always goes better if the parties involved resolutely avoid any “burden-shifting” maneuvers, and that teaching always goes better if you bring cookies.

Aidan Kestigian, Ph.D. is an Associate of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University and the Vice President for ThinkerAnalytix (TA), an education non-profit organization. TA programs are designed to help move learning and working communities from discord to discourse by building reasoning and communication skills. Aidan received her Ph.D. in Logic, Computation, and Methodology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2018, and taught logic and ethics to college students for a decade before and during her time at TA.

Nate Otey is the Lead Curriculum Consultant for ThinkerAnalytix and received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Mathematics from Harvard College, where he fell in love with teaching. He then served as a Fellow in the Harvard Department of Philosophy, where he led the development of ThinkerAnalytix curriculum and partnerships. He currently teaches at Boston Trinity Academy.

Ways to take this course

When you enroll in this course, you will have the option of pursuing a Verified Certificate or Auditing the Course.

A Verified Certificate costs $209 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate. 

Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums.  Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.

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Structure and Function of Argument: Introduction to Critical Thinking

Explore the underlying structures of everyday arguments and develop the tools to communicate effectively.

• Introductory

Associated Schools

Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences

What you'll learn.

Explore the shape and structures of arguments you encounter daily, helping improve your overall communication and English language skills.

Learn how to visually map an argument, analyzing, evaluating, and optimizing the strength of your argument along the way.

Become a better listener by seeking to understand others’ perspectives and engaging in respectful discussion and disagreement.

Build the tools to improve your logical reasoning and emotional intelligence by understanding how conflict and tension can impact communication.

Improve your ability to think critically, seek to understand underlying assumptions, and identify biases – allowing you to create more compassionate, compelling, and convincing arguments.

Learn how to regulate your emotional response to differing points of view, expressing genuine curiosity and inquisitiveness as a means to learn from the other party.

Course description

Life is full of arguments—you encounter them everyday in your social and professional circles. From casually discussing what to have for dinner tonight with your family to passionately debating the best candidate to vote for in the upcoming election, arguments are a method to better educate ourselves and understand others.

All arguments share an underlying mapping structure that backs a main claim with supporting reasons, sometimes including counterpoints to anticipated objections. In order to present an argument that will clearly communicate your perspective, you must first understand the basic structure of any argument and develop your logic and critical thinking skills.

In Structure and Function of Argument: Introduction to Critical Thinking, you will engage in dynamic practice exercises to develop the ability to recognize, analyze, and construct arguments you encounter on a daily basis. You will consider the structure of an argument, focusing on the underlying organization of claims and reasoning. You will determine if the reasons support the author or speaker’s main claim, build well-constructed responses, and grow your overall English language skills. You will also test your listening skills by recognizing how things like logical fallacies, conflicting points of view, and controversial subjects can impact effective communication.

Using a tool called “argument mapping,” you will visually diagram the structure of an argument to identify how reasons connect and function in an argument. You will then apply your learnings and test your own arguments using this tool – allowing you to gauge the overall quality of your arguments and take steps to make them stronger.

By the end of the course, you will have built a toolkit to engage in more constructive conversations and to actively listen to better understand others’ points of view.

Join our list to learn more

Developing Critical Thinking

• Posted January 10, 2018
• By Iman Rastegari

In a time where deliberately false information is continually introduced into public discourse, and quickly spread through social media shares and likes, it is more important than ever for young people to develop their critical thinking. That skill, says Georgetown professor William T. Gormley, consists of three elements: a capacity to spot weakness in other arguments, a passion for good evidence, and a capacity to reflect on your own views and values with an eye to possibly change them. But are educators making the development of these skills a priority?

"Some teachers embrace critical thinking pedagogy with enthusiasm and they make it a high priority in their classrooms; other teachers do not," says Gormley, author of the recent Harvard Education Press release The Critical Advantage: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in School . "So if you are to assess the extent of critical-thinking instruction in U.S. classrooms, you’d find some very wide variations." Which is unfortunate, he says, since developing critical-thinking skills is vital not only to students' readiness for college and career, but to their civic readiness, as well.

"It's important to recognize that critical thinking is not just something that takes place in the classroom or in the workplace, it's something that takes place — and should take place — in our daily lives," says Gormley.

In this edition of the Harvard EdCast, Gormley looks at the value of teaching critical thinking, and explores how it can be an important solution to some of the problems that we face, including "fake news."

About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iT unes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber and co-produced by Jill Anderson, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.

An education podcast that keeps the focus simple: what makes a difference for learners, educators, parents, and communities

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Help Students Think Critically in the Age of AI

Explore more.

• Artificial Intelligence
• Case Teaching
• Classroom Management
• Student Engagement

A s educators, our mission is to inspire students to engage deeply with the material we teach, equipping them with the critical-thinking skills they’ll need in a world that changes by the minute. With generative AI in the picture, that mission has become more crucial—and we can even use gen AI as a powerful tool to accomplish it.

Doing so requires us to intentionally rethink and renew our assignments and teaching approaches. And if we get it right, by encouraging students to use AI as a thought partner and remain active participants in their own education, we can help them analyze more deeply, solve problems more creatively, and think independently.

The three strategies I share here are ways I’ve adjusted my own courses. They’re specific to the case method of teaching, but the principles behind them can easily be extended to other pedagogies. Each of them aims to make AI an ally in students’ learning, pushing them to draw insights, evaluate complex ideas, and communicate their conclusions effectively.

With these approaches, we can prepare students to think critically and creatively in an AI-integrated world.

1. Design assignments for critical thinking

Making sure assignments require critical thinking has always been important, but it’s become even more so in a world where generative AI can do many simple tasks for us.

Whether for in-class or independent work, the best assignments are multi-layered, requiring students to draw connections between various concepts and use those connections to form independent conclusions. Multi-layered assignments, for example, ask students to connect a case study to other readings, to ideas that emerged during class discussions, and to their own personal experiences. They require students to draw multiple connections and to explain their logic, not just their solution or recommendation. These types of exercises promote the best learning, and it’s a bonus that AI can’t do them for our students.

“As educators, our role is to guide students in harnessing the power of AI as a tool for deeper understanding, rather than a shortcut for superficial answers.”

In one multi-layered assignment I’ve developed, students are given three columns of financials from three companies and asked to figure out which column belongs to which company, what generic competitive strategy each firm is pursuing, and whether one firm might be struggling to position itself effectively. To complete this exercise, students need to understand financial ratios, Porter’s generic strategies framework, and other concepts from strategic management and finance. Students learn how to apply knowledge from multiple class lessons to this exercise. It requires the synthesis of several topics from class, and gen AI can’t do it effectively—I’ve tested it to make sure.

That doesn’t mean AI can’t help, and I do allow students to use gen AI as an aid. Students are free to ask ChatGPT questions about calculating financial ratios or what different types of financial data represent, and, in fact, I encourage them to do so. Again, it’s not about discouraging AI use. It’s about helping students understand how to use AI as a tool without becoming overly dependent on it.

Faculty members can build other types of multi-layered assignments by developing tasks that require students to integrate three types of deep work: data analysis, the application of conceptual frameworks, and the creative development of recommendations based on that critical thinking.

2. Modernize writing assignments for the AI era

Writing assignments are perhaps the most common scenarios in which students need guidance in using AI appropriately and effectively. If students use gen AI to do their writing for them, they don’t hone the analytic thinking skills that writing assignments are meant to teach.

Fortunately, I’ve found ways to develop writing assignments that encourage healthier gen AI use by our students. The key is requiring deep insights that gen AI is incapable of providing.

In the past, I often gave students writing assignments that asked them to summarize basic elements of a case or complete a five forces analysis. However, these are things gen AI can easily do. To guarantee students are working independently, I now ask more involved questions that require students to perform a certain level of independent analysis or to draw connections to class topics.

Tasks I might ask students to do in a more complex writing assignment include the following:

Examine data in an exhibit

Evaluate a firm’s overall strategy

Connect a case analysis to concepts from supplementary readings

Draw on class discussions and their own experiences to support their analysis

Make a recommendation and be prepared to argue in support of that recommendation

Once you’ve developed a writing assignment that requires deeper thinking, I encourage you to run it through ChatGPT or another AI tool yourself. If the AI can complete the assignment adequately, you’ll know that you need to refine the assignment to require even more independent analysis. Having gen AI complete the assignment has the extra benefit of showing you what it might look like if students try to do the same. You might even show students what an analysis by ChatGPT looks like for a particular assignment, and then ask students to improve upon and go beyond that AI-generated content.

3. Update case questions for deeper analysis

If you teach with the case method, you’re likely accustomed to giving students questions to answer after they’ve read a case. Traditionally, these questions were designed to prepare students for class discussion.

In the age of AI, though, straightforward preparatory questions won’t tell you whether students are adequately prepared to contribute analysis come discussion time. Instead, to get them ready for the deeper thinking required of case discussions, create questions that are broader in scope but that push students to analyze more deeply.

For example, for a case I wrote about Viking River Cruises , I might have previously asked students to perform a break-even analysis on a new cruise ship as part of their case preparation. However, ChatGPT can perform a break-even analysis easily—and do it well. So instead, I made the break-even analysis an in-class group activity.

“Making sure assignments require critical thinking has always been important, but it’s become even more so in a world where generative AI can do many simple tasks for us.”

I’ve altered the before-class questions to be much broader, rather than directing students about the precise type of analysis they should undertake. Students must think critically about the context of the case and synthesize that with other topics they may have learned. They need to identify the conceptual frameworks that might be useful, drawing on everything they have learned in the course. Moreover, they must argue why they chose a particular framework to help analyze the case situation. An AI tool will not know precisely how we have been learning to break down complex strategic management challenges; it typically will offer a more generic approach.

This approach needn’t only pertain to cases; you can also use it when you’re designing questions that accompany other types of readings, such as articles or books chapters. For example, you might ask students to revisit a topic from an earlier class discussion and apply ideas from multiple new readings you have assigned since that dialogue in your course.

Broad questions that force deep thinking and original insights are the type that will develop more advanced independent thinking in our students.

Fostering independent thinking alongside AI

Our role as educators is to guide students in harnessing the power of AI as a tool for deeper understanding, rather than a shortcut for superficial answers. Generative AI is here to stay, and many of our students will rely on it now and in their future careers. By integrating it thoughtfully into our teaching, we can prepare them to use it responsibly and effectively.

The key lies in designing assignments and classroom experiences that challenge students to think critically, analyze independently, and engage meaningfully with the material. These are the skills that AI cannot replicate but can help amplify when used purposefully. By fostering these abilities, we equip students to navigate an AI-integrated world—not just as passive users, but as innovative thinkers and creators who can thrive in any context.

With this approach, we can strike a balance that empowers students to think deeply, leverage AI effectively, and lead confidently in their future careers.

Note: The author, Michael Roberto, presented this article’s ideas in an HBP Education webinar entitled “Harnessing Gen AI in the Undergraduate Classroom.” You can view a recording of the webinar here .

Michael Roberto  is the Trustee Professor of Management and the director of the Center for Program Innovation at Bryant University. He joined the tenured faculty at Bryant after serving for six years on the faculty at Harvard Business School.

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Making the most of the hybrid classroom, cultivating self-worth in the age of ai, 5 key lessons from hbs’s pandemic teaching transformation.

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AC 221: Critical Thinking in Data Science

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API-318: Thinking Analytically in an Uncertain World

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The goal of this course is to help you think more analytically, which I hope will lead you to better understand the world around you, make smarter personal and professional decisions, achieve better outcomes, and ultimately lead a more fulfilling life. A central premise of the course is that the world is full of uncertainty, and that using systematic approaches, frameworks and tools to deal with this uncertainty can be immensely helpful for individuals, teams, and organizations. The course will use a variety of approaches including interactive teaching, blended learning, case studies, simulations, learning journals, and a forecasting tournament. You will constantly be asked to apply what you learn in the course to personal, professional and policy situations.

Academic Writing and Critical Reading

Harvard Summer School

Registration Closes: June 20, 2024 Credits: 4

Summer Term 2024

Part of Term

3-week session I

Live Attendance Web Conference

Credit Status

Undergraduate

Section Status

Tuition information, instructor info.

Emilie J. Raymer , PhD

Preceptor in Expository Writing, Harvard University

Emilie J. Raymer

Meeting info.

MTWTh 12:00pm - 3:00pm (6/24 - 7/11)

Participation Option: Online Synchronous

Last day to register: June 20, 2024

Prerequisites

All sections of this course, this course may contribute to:.

• Bachelor’s Degree Program

Leadership & Managing People

HBR Guide to Critical Thinking

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Publication Date: January 31, 2023

Tackle complex situations with critical thinking.

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The answer is in how you think. The HBR Guide to Critical Thinking will help you navigate your most challenging issues, from difficult problems to tough decisions to complex scenarios. By carefully observing the situation, gathering information, inviting other perspectives, and analyzing what's in front of you, you can move forward with confidence while building this crucial leadership skill.

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