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Undergraduate critical thinking skills

What are these?

The term 'critical thinking' does not mean 'critical' the sense of being 'significant' nor the sense of 'disapproving'. The expression encompasses the idea of analysing facts, information, concepts or beliefs in ways that are objective and hence unbiased. In exercising your critical thinking skills you need to:

• frame the structure of your work to demonstrate the analytical approaches essential for the development of critical thinking;
• develop approaches that encourage you to exercise judgement through logical thinking and evaluation of facts, data and concepts; and
• solve problems in case studies and scenarios from as neutral a perspective as possible, based on evidence and not 'knee-jerk' reaction.

How we can help

The Academic Achievement Teaching Unit tutors can help you with some aspects of the development of critical thinking skills by meeting with you to discuss ways in which you can tackle your studies by adopting a more analytical view of the topics and discussions that you encounter in your studies but please note our expectations.

If you would like to receive some help with regard to developing these skills, then please contact: aatu@dundee.ac.uk who will organise an appointment for you.

Information for staff

If you would like to discuss ways in which you can encourage students to become more analytical in their appraisal of the materials and content of their learning, then please contact the Academic Skills Advisors aatu@dundee.ac.uk. You may also find it helpful to look at the 'Write Attributes' module on My Dundee which addresses some issues arising from this topic in the context of plagiarism, citation and referencing.