Read an Excerpt
The Critical Thinking Tool Kit
Spark Your Team's Creativity with 35 Problem Solving Activities
By Marlene Caroselli
AMACOM
Copyright © 2011 HRD Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-1741-6
Chapter One
Quick Thinking #1 Attending to Attention 13 #2 Rhymed Reductions 19 #3 The Endless Question 25 #4 The Questionable Question 29 #5 The K-W-I-C Technique 33 #6 Juxtaposed Pairs 37 #7 Presidential Pursuits 41 #8 The Umbrage Not Taken 45 #9 Brainteasing/Brainsqueezing 51 #10 Perceptual Shifts 57 #11 Organizational Oxymorons 65 #12 Stratification 71
#1: Attending to Attention
Overview: This activity provides participants with a means of efficiently encoding information by using a framework with which to organize important information in a meaningful way.
Objective: To provide an opportunity for participants to process information more efficiently.
Supplies: Copies of Handout #1-1
Time: 15–20 minutes
Advance Make enough copies of Handout #1-1 for the entire group. Arrange the Preparation: seating so it is easy for groups of three or four to share their responses.
Participants/ This activity works with any number of participants and is especially useful Application: when one must take notes on significant material presented by a facilitator in a lecture format. It can be used each time a lecture (or mini-lecture) is presented.
Introduction to Concept:
"Tomorrow's illiterate," Herbert Gerjuoy asserts, "will not be the man who cannot read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn." An important part of the learning process is paying attention to material we are putting into our storage banks. If we are not concentrating, if we are bored, or if we are anxious or distracted, tired or ill, depressed or excited, we may not be giving the knowledge the attention it deserves. Later, when we go to retrieve it, we will probably have difficulty finding it. When there are gaps in our knowledge, there will be corresponding gaps in our ability to critically assess situations.
When we are missing information we need, we tend to blame a "poor memory." The real culprit is an inefficient coding system. Inefficiency in this system obviates efficiency in critical thinking, for we cannot give issues a 360-degree scrutiny if we only have a 180-degree perspective.
One of the best examples of an efficient coding system is found in what is called the "skeleton image."
Procedure:
1. Introduce the Knowledge Skeleton via this presentation:
As you prepare to listen to a lecture on "empowerment," imagine that the head and each of the limbs of a skeleton represent five large areas within this broad topic. While you listen to my lecture, make notes in one of these five areas and do not—I repeat—do not try to copy every word I say. Instead, record main points as concisely as you can. Look at these knowledge skeletons now. [Distribute copies of Handout #1-1, one per participant.] Note that the areas for this topic are Business Practices, Definition of empowerment, Structures, Ideas, and Partnerships. With other topics, other areas would be significant. The next time you are in a class, ask your instructor for such an overview so you can easily add "flesh" (your notes, your thoughts) to the bare-bones outline you have been presented with.
2. Distribute Handout #1-1 showing the knowledge skeleton and ask participants to add "flesh" to the bones by writing down important points from the lecture.
3. Read the following aloud:
The Quality movement has forced organizations to examine current business practices, to make changes in work processes, and to create new alliances with customers, employees, and other organizations. This movement has made leadership a practice in which anyone, at any level of the organization, can engage. In the words of author Masaaki Imai of Toyota, the new leadership is based on personal experience and conviction and "not necessarily on authority, rank, or age." As we think about the definition of empowerment, we cannot ignore the experience and commitment of employees. When the organization acknowledges these traits and when the organization willingly uses the talents employees are eager to share, then we have a culture of empowerment. Structures (formal and informal) must be in place, however, so employees' voices can be heard. In smaller companies, the top executives invite groups of employees to have lunch with them each week so they can get closer to workers and their concerns. Senior managers in empowered organizations earnestly seek information about problems employees may be experiencing and ideas they may have for improvement. Other companies seek to "hear" employee voices by using suggestion systems. Organizations that have established formal Quality Councils already have in place the structures necessary for translating a team's well-researched proposal into feasible plans. To be sure, there will be barriers standing in the way of moving ideas from teams to managers to reality. But once these barriers have been identified, team members can work to remove them. It is imperative that managers actively solicit ideas from subordinates through formal suggestion processes or in less formal ways. Management cannot ignore the potential wealth of ideas waiting to be shared at every level of the organization. As Imai notes in his book Kaizen, in one year alone, 1.5 million suggestions were offered, 95% of which were implemented fully or in part by Toyota management. When employees feel empowered, they get excited about the possibility of forming new partnerships. These alliances may be made with other organizations through benchmarking. They can also be made with other employees through process improvement teams, with customers through focus groups, with the community at large through new outreach programs. The form of the partnership follows the function of continuous improvement, no matter the forum.
4. Have participants compare the notes they made and discuss the content of the lecture.
5. After five minutes, ask them to put their notes away as you give a quiz:
a. What do you remember about business practices? b. What do you remember about the definition of empowerment? c. What do you remember about structures? d. What do you remember about ideas? e. What do you remember about partnerships?
6. Ask them to discuss the advantages of taking notes in skeletal fashion as opposed to taking no notes or taking notes in a more haphazard way. For most people, the flesh-to-bones process works quite well. Have participants evaluate it in terms of their recall.
Extending the Activity:
1. Draw the skeleton on a flip chart and label each of the limbs and the head with one of the objectives of the course. (Or use the basic knowledge categories into which you have divided the course.) At the end of the session, have participants write what they remember having learned in each of the categories listed.
2. Preview a video you intend to show in a future class and draw the skeletal divisions on a transparency. Have participants add the flesh of ideas and new knowledge after they have viewed the film.
Workplace Connections:
1. Suggest that employees use the Knowledge Skeleton in this way when they return to work: At their next (and subsequent) staff meeting, a volunteer will keep notes of the meeting's progress by correlating the skeletal frame to the agenda for the meeting. Minutes could later be distributed—not in their usual typed format, but rather with "bulleted" entries beneath each of the focal points of the meeting.
2. Encourage the use of this framework for individual reading. Before participants begin reading a book or long magazine article, they should skim the Table of Contents or major headings to get an overarching sense of the key points being made. Then, as they are reading, they can add verbal flesh to the skeletal outlines they have prepared.
3. Reinforce the concept and process of efficient encoding by asking participants to think about the one person in their work environment whom they most admire for his or her ability to absorb and retain voluminous amounts of information. Point out that they could learn quite a bit from that individual about the mechanism this person uses to remember important information. Suggest that they invite the person to have coffee or lunch one day and initiate a conversation about this post-session assignment they have been given.
Questions for Further Consideration:
1. You have spent many years acquiring and reusing information. What mechanisms have you developed to efficiently organize and retain information?
2. It is said that the amount of "information pressure" we now experience is at least 30 times as great as it was in the 1980s. What will you do to keep up?
3. In what other areas of your life have you learned to streamline information—processes, paperwork, filing, etc.?
4. Has technology helped you efficiently store and quickly retrieve information, or has it made the process even more complicated? Explain your answer.
#2: Rhymed Reductions
Overview: Participants will first work on a brief illustrative activity via an overhead transparency and will engage in a longer activity, in teams, to analyze a lengthy passage and reduce it to its simplest terms.
Objective: To stimulate critical assessment and the ability to translate excessive information into valuable nuggets of knowledge.
Supplies: • Transparency #2-1
• Overhead projector
• Copies of Handout #2-1
Time: About 25 minutes
Advance Download Transparency #2-1. Also make copies of Handout #2-1 (enough Preparation: for each participant) and staple the two pages together. If possible, arrange tables and chairs in groupings of five or six.
Participants/ This exercise, suitable for any number of participants, works especially Application: well as an introduction to the course. It serves to remind attendees to take notes—not on every single word they hear, but rather on the points they have deemed, through a critical-thought process, to be most important. It can also be used as an energizer.
The exercise works well as a summarizing activity. Point out that the average person speaks about 150 words a minute. If they multiply that number by the number of minutes during which they have spoken, others have spoken, a video was presented, or material was read, thousands and thousands of words have entered their minds in a single day. Ask what they judge to be most valuable to them.
Introduction to Concept:
Students of psychology know that Zipf's Law of Least Effort promotes the condensing of knowledge: the more effort required to express a thought, the less likely that thought will be expressed. And, of course, when thoughts are not expressed—inwardly or outwardly—they cease to exist. Added to this cognitive thrust is William James's assertion that the essence of genius is "to know what to overlook."
This advice is echoed by author Mitchell Posner, who urges us to become "information ecologists"—individuals who keep their mental environment free of garbage (unreliable, irrelevant, or redundant information). Given the amount of information to which we have access on a daily basis, it becomes more and more important for us to find our way amid the overflow and the overload of data.
Examples:
1. Deliver the following instructions:
I am going to show you on the overhead projector a paragraph that tells a story. I am going to fl ash it very quickly, so you will have to skip over most of the words and let only the truly important words penetrate your consciousness. You will feel uncomfortable doing this at first. But as you become used to the technique, you will grow more and more appreciative of the efficiency it produces. Look at this paragraph, but now select only the key words, so you can tell me what the gist of the paragraph is. [Show Transparency #2-1 now for three or four seconds.]
2. Ask the class if, after only a few seconds' exposure to the paragraph, anyone is able to distill its essence. If someone can, offer the appropriate praise and ask that person how he or she learned to read so efficiently. If no one is able to paraphrase the key point, show the transparency again and underline these key words or phrases:
"Manhattan," "deceptively simple home," "deceptively simple man," "Mr. Cowles," and "evil."
3. Continue with this mini-lecture:
In the example, we reduced the verbiage to a few essential phrases. In longer passages, such as the one I am about to show you, you can still improve your comprehension, storage, and retrieval of information by reducing a dense passage to its most critical components. In the second exercise, I am going to ask you to reduce the essential points to four words—and I want you to make them rhyming words!
4. Distribute Handout #2-1. After participants have had enough time to read it, divide them into groups of five or six and allow about ten minutes for them to capture the essence of the passage in just four rhyming words.
5. Call on each group to share what has been done.
6. Summarize the lesson by pointing out that hundreds of books have been written over the years on the topic of teams and teambuilding, yet most people recall very little of what was read. Those who do are likely to use a four-word rhyming phrase coined more than thirty years ago by consultant Bruce Tuckman to describe the stages of team formation (which is basically what the handout described). The four stages are Form–Storm–Norm–Perform. Everyone remembers Mr. Tuckman's condensation. And with this four-word embryo, most people can then expound upon the nature of teams and the dynamics evinced by team members.
[Note: If class members are already familiar with Bruce Tuckman's descriptors, have them select four other rhyming words that are equally effective at capturing the salient points of the passage.]
Extending the Activity:
1. Take a newspaper article and use it to engage participants in the same process. Ask them to reduce the paragraphs to a few salient points—rhyming ones at that. Several hours or several days later (depending on the length of the course), supply them with the rhyming words and ask them to recall the details of the article from which they were derived.
2. Collect other examples of how a synthesized version made the longer version much easier to remember. Encourage class members to do the same. Have a volunteer distribute examples to class members and discuss them.
3. Instead of information on team formation, select lengthy textbook passages of material relevant to the course you are facilitating, and ask participants to reduce the information to the most essential knowledge.
Workplace Connections:
1. Before the training session has ended, ask for a group of volunteers to review at least one instructional or user's manual to see if important steps can be reduced to an easy-to-remember memory trigger.
2. Advise participants to work collaboratively when they return to work in order to help one another become more skilled at using rhyme or other mnemonic devices as prompts to recall large chunks of information they are expected to have at their fingertips.
3. Ad writers are especially adept at conveying the most meaning in the fewest possible words. Ask participants to rewrite their organization's mission statement (which few people, typically, can recall) into an easy-to-remember phrase (or advertisement) that captures the essential thrust of the statement.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Critical Thinking Tool Kit by Marlene Caroselli Copyright © 2011 by HRD Press. Excerpted by permission of AMACOM. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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