Providing Undergraduates with Opportunities to Explicitly Reflect on How News Articles Promote the Public (Mis)understanding of Science

Fostering instructor-student argumentative interaction in online lecturing to large groups: a study amidst the Covid-19 pandemic

“…In our case, this occurred when students explicitly reflected on their argumentation process. erefore, our outcomes add empirical evidence to the claim that argumentative interaction is a form of active learning (Archila et al 2018;, 2021aBaker 2009;Jiménez-Aleixandre 2007;Muller Mirza 2015).…”

“…e three main ideas presented in the above paragraphs can be summarized as: (1) online learning has been adopted worldwide to face the Covid-19 pandemic (Zhu and Liu 2020); (2) active learning is a key aspect of a desirable online learning environment (Salmon 2013), and (3) argumentative interaction is a form of active learning (Archila et al 2018(Archila et al , 2020(Archila et al , 2021aBaker 2009;Jiménez-Aleixandre 2007;Muller Mirza 2015). Nonetheless, Archila et al (2020) note that university courses rarely involve undergraduates in argumentative interaction.…”

“…Additionally, in the last session of the implementation of the pedagogical strategy, and as a way of finding out about the opinion of the participating students about the use of OIFA in online lecturing, and thus receive feedback for future improvements of our strategy, they were asked to answer a 11-item online anonymous survey (Appendix). is instrument was based on previous intervention surveys used by Archila et al (2020Archila et al ( , 2021aArchila et al ( , 2021b to find out about the level of contribution of interventions focused on the promotion of argumentative interaction (items 1, 5, and 6) and receive undergraduates' feedback (items 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11).…”

“…In the case of university science education, the combination lecture-active learning seems to be a rational and reasonable possibility whether we acknowledge that many science courses rely primarily on lecture (Wieman 2017). Archila (2017) and Archila et al (2020Archila et al ( , 2021aArchila et al ( , 2021b maintain that engaging students in argumentative interaction is a powerful form of active learning, pointing out that argumentative interaction is not a common practice in university education.…”

Using the Controversy over Human Race to Introduce Students to the Identification and the Evaluation of Arguments

“…More recently, Archila et al, ( 2019 , 2021a ) and Hyytinen et al ( 2019 ) claimed that critical thinking is essential for the development of scientific thinking skills. Thus, making informed decisions about climate change (Rehg, 2011 ), evolution and creationism (Archila & Molina, 2020 ), GMO crops (Fahnestock, 2020 ), nuclear energy (Jho et al, 2014 ), and genetics, ancestry, and race (Beckwith et al, 2017 ), among other controversies, requires educated citizens who critically identify and evaluate arguments as a key element of the construction of democratic societies.…”