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Critical Thinking Tutorial: Test your Existing Knowledge

This tutorial will empower you with valuable critical thinking skills that are essential for your university education.

Test Your Prior Knowledge

The key to developing your critical thinking skills is being aware of your unconscious biases when making decisions or evaluating information. An effective approach is to set aside your personal feelings, political beliefs, worldview, and any preconceived notions about what you want the truth to be. Consider this as you complete the polling activity below.

Keep in mind that clicking the submit button will compare your response to others, but it does not determine a right or wrong answer. The poll is merely a way to establish some common perspectives about the importance of critical thinking.

Poll - In each of these scenarios, what type of thinking is being used?

You choose to go into Engineering because your mother is an engineer and your high school guidance counselor said those who are good at math, as you are, should go into engineering.
Intuition: 214 votes (82.95%)
Critical Thinking: 40 votes (15.5%)
Don't know: 4 votes (1.55%)
Total Votes: 258
Your whole family votes for the Green Party so you do too.
Intuition: 235 votes (94.76%)
Critical Thinking: 5 votes (2.02%)
Don't know: 8 votes (3.23%)
Total Votes: 248
You see a meme that uses a quote from the American President saying the CBC is in cahoots with American rebels. You track down the original source and find he was misquoted. You, therefore, do not believe the content of the meme.
Intuition: 5 votes (2.06%)
Critical Thinking: 237 votes (97.53%)
Don't know: 1 votes (0.41%)
Total Votes: 243
You come up with a novel way to brush your teeth that seems to get the job done better so you adopt this new method.
Intuition: 91 votes (35.97%)
Critical Thinking: 158 votes (62.45%)
Don't know: 4 votes (1.58%)
Total Votes: 253
You overhear your uncle saying that climate change is a hoax, that the Earth’s climate has always changed due to natural cooling and warming cycles. This sounds plausible so you tweet this out to your followers on Twitter.
Intuition: 214 votes (92.24%)
Critical Thinking: 11 votes (4.74%)
Don't know: 7 votes (3.02%)
Total Votes: 232
Your professor says that research is fabricated based on who sponsors it, and that scientists make up stories to receive research grants. You think this is true because professors must know what they are talking about.
Intuition: 222 votes (94.87%)
Critical Thinking: 11 votes (4.7%)
Don't know: 1 votes (0.43%)
Total Votes: 234
Your climate activist friend believes that the world is going to end in about 12 years if we do nothing about climate change. Her argument is compelling, but you decide to investigate further.
Intuition: 13 votes (5.2%)
Critical Thinking: 236 votes (94.4%)
Don't Know: 1 votes (0.4%)
Total Votes: 250

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