Introduction--Study Habits,
Critical Thinking, Logical Errors and Fallacies
Class Notes/Chapter Study Questions and Review Questions
Class Notes are presented for each chapter under
its section. Use the Class Notes to guide your reading in the
textbook and study of online materials.
There is more information available to you in the book and on the website
than is required for success in the course. The student will be tested based
on these Class Notes. Use the Class Notes to focus
your studies as you move through the course.
You will find the Class Notes/Study Questions in the navigation
bar on the left side of the web page, under "Chapters". Within
each 'chapter' you will find 4 sections:
1st Each chapter begins with 'Questions for Review'.
These are a general guide to the knowledge I expect you to know for this course to achieve a
course grade of at
least C.
2nd Next is a section 'Define' - a list of terms that you should
know and be able to use.
3rd is a set of detailed questions that will help you to focus
on the specific information
4th "Lecture Slides" - this is a power point slide show. Do
this AFTER you define the words and read the chapter.
| Let's begin with the Introduction section: Your first test
will cover this material :-)
Questions for Review
Introduction to Environmental Science: A Global
Concern
1st - the general concept
questions:
-
Which study skills in table
I.1 do you need to improve?
-
Describe some ways you can
avoid procrastination and keep on schedule.
-
List four learning styles.
Which fits you best?
-
Describe the SQ3R study
techniques.
-
What are ten steps in
critical thinking?
-
Name (and describe) seven
attributes or dispositions essential for critical thinking.
-
List some adverbs or
adverbial phrases that introduce premises and conclusions.
-
Distinguish between an
ad hominem attack and an appeal to ignorance.
-
Describe three questions
you’d ask to evaluate the reliability of Internet information.
2nd -
the Define section
Define:
Literate
Literacy
Critical
thinking
3rd - the detailed questions
What is
Literacy?
How do you
know that you are literate?
What is
‘environmental literacy’?
How do you
know when you are environmentally literate?
What are the 4
types of ‘learning’
What does SQ3R
mean?
What does each
letter mean?
What are the
Logical Errors and Fallacies?
List them and
describe each one.
Find examples
of each Logical error and Fallacy in the daily newspaper. Look
especially, in the editorial section.
What is
Critical Thinking?
How is it
applied to Environmental Science?
What does
Compare and Contrast mean?
Compare – to
find how two (or more) things are similar.
Contrast – to
find how two (or more) things are different.
The best way
to COMPARE and CONTRAST is to create a table. Use whatever you are going compare/contrast at
the top of the columns. List the ‘conditions or attributes that you
are comparing/contrasting down the left side. Put the way that each
responds to the condition/attribute in the column under the
appropriate column.
[Lecture Slides]
for the chapters will be here, at the end of the Study Questions
section.
NOTE - there is no
slide show for the Introduction
|
Using Search Engines
The Internet (or World Wide Web) offers a vast resource
for students of environmental science. How can you find the information
you need in this maze of information? Search engines offer an excellent
way to find and filter the myriad sources on the Web. Probably you have
already used at least one of these sources, but are you aware how many
of these valuable tools are now available and how different they are?
Go to
www.surffast.com/ to find an extensive list of search engines. Test
the same term (perhaps global warming or biodiversity losses, for
example) on a half dozen of them and compare how fast they respond, how
many hits they find and what the differences are between the information
they offer. Try some hierarchical search engines (those that organize
information in categories) such as
http://www.yahoo.com
and
http://www.lycos.com/. They often have annoying ads that slow your
search, but they allow you to browse related themes and show you similar
words or phrases that could be related to your topic.
Also try some meta-search engines such as
www.dogpile.com/,
www.Google.com/, or
http://www.profusion.com. These meta-engines examine other search
engines to give you a much broader database. They also tend to find more
resources. In a test to see what it would find on "global warming,"
Google searched 13 billion web pages and found 311,000 hits in 0.05
second. By contrast, Lycos found seven categories and 86 sites but took
almost a minute to load. If you’re just starting your search, however,
you may prefer to have fewer sites and more selectivity in finding
useful ones. The Lycos Environment News, for instance, lets you browse
current news stories and may reveal topics that you didn’t even know
existed.
Many search engines allow you to type in a question in
ordinary English: "Where can I find an article on global warming?" This
may take you to places that you’d rather not go, however. The more
specific and limited your query, the more likely you’ll be to get useful
results. Some search engines allow you to use Boolean terms such as AND,
OR, BUT NOT. If you enclose a phrase in quotation marks it will direct
the search to that exact phrase including all the words in it. AND (in
caps) will limit the search to both words (global AND warming), while OR
(global OR warming) will find sources that have either word. The phrase,
BUT NOT, excludes terms that you know you don’t want.
You’ll probably find that searching for the same words
in different systems gives you very different results. When you’re doing
research, it pays to use more than one search engine to make sure that
you aren’t missing important perspectives and information.
Online Dictionaries
A good online dictionary is
http://www.m-w.com, Merriam-Webster dictionary, and
www.dictionary.com will direct
you to specialized dictionaries including science dictionaries.
