Teaching General Education Philosophy Courses to Underprepared College Students

"I teach at Central State University (CSU), Ohio's only state HBCU, where many students are first-generation college students and where most of our students' high school experience does not prepare them for college. These sociological trends have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the availability of generative AI. Because I mostly teach general education philosophy courses to first- and second-year students, I am often on the frontlines of our university's effort to help students develop the habits and skills necessary to succeed in college."

"During my first semester at CSU, I found that I could not simply post readings in the Learning Management System (LMS) and expect my students to come to class prepared. Chronic absenteeism was a serious problem, but the students' extreme disengagement also included a refusal or the inability to (1) study assigned texts and videos, (2) take notes on assigned materials, (3) take notes in class, or (4) study for exams."

"More than anything else, I teach PHI 2240: Critical Thinking, a general education philosophy course that covers reasoning skills broadly conceived. I have therefore spent the last four years engaging in a trial-and-error process of course development, radically changing my critical thinking class every semester and experimenting with new pedagogies. Each of the five sections below explains how I have addressed the five problems indicated above."

Central State University is Ohio's only state HBCU, with many first-generation students whose high school preparation often fails to ready them for college. The COVID-19 pandemic and the availability of generative AI have exacerbated existing sociological challenges. Students commonly exhibit chronic absenteeism and disengagement, including failure or refusal to study assigned texts and videos, take notes on materials or in class, or study for exams. Some students rely on accumulating points on formative, completion-graded assignments to offset poor performance on major summative assessments. A PHI 2240 Critical Thinking course was redesigned through iterative, semester-by-semester pedagogical experiments to address these problems, including embedding content in interactive social-annotation tools.

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