Engaging Freshman Engineers Using the Paul-Elder Model of Critical Thinking

3. An exercise for critical thinking reinforcement and department presentation engagement 
The faculty team created an “Analyze the Discipline” exercise based on Nosich’s “Logic of a 
discipline”
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exercise for each departmental presentation. The exercise requires students to analyze each 
departmental discipline, based largely on the department’s presentation, by identifying the elements of 
thought as they relate to that discipline. The assignment is a one page list of prompts (built directly from 
the elements of thought), and is customized for each discipline. The prompts for Chemical Engineering 
are shown in Table 1. The students are given a hard copy of the assignment just before the presentation. 
The assignment requires students to identify and explain each of the eight elements of thought as applied 
to the particular discipline. It was intended that this would make students more engaged in presentations 
and appreciate their usefulness even if they did not plan to major in that discipline. Students were 
reminded that at many points in their career, they may be part of multi-disciplinary teams and should be 
informed about all the engineering disciplines regardless of their intended major. 
While similar to Nosich’s exercise, the “Analyze the Discipline” exercise is simpler. Nosich develops 
the concept of the “Logic of a Discipline” in more detail and depth, emphasizing the need to find the 
inter-relationships and inter-dependence of the eight elements on one another within a discipline in order 
to see the synergies within a discipline and to truly understand the “logic” of a discipline that constitutes 
how those within that discipline reason. Students may not achieve this level of synthesis with the 
“Analyze the Discipline” exercises, but the exercises should serve to reinforce the elements of thought 
of the Paul-Elder framework and help students better understand the various engineering disciplines.