Resumen

PAEZ, Haydée Guillermina  y  ARREAZA PAEZ, Evelyn Cristina. Electronic discussion forum for developing critical thinking at higher education. Paradígma [online]. 2014, vol.35, n.2, pp.63-90. ISSN 1011-2251.

The Education Act (2009) establishes the development of critical thinking and the creative potential of each student to promote the full exercise of his personality and citizenship as well as the use of information and communication technologies. To appraise the potential of electronic discussion forum as a teaching strategy to develop e-students’ critical thinking at Higher Education level courses, a research in the interpretive paradigm, descriptive, naturalistic method, documental, cross design was carried out. The contributions of 24 e-students enrolled in a doctoral course in of university education , during the period September-December 2012, were taken as a unit of analysis. Its content composition was analyzed, described and read into. Generating questions asked were classified, and the voices and tones used by e-students to answer questions were analyzed to specify critical thinking skills brought to light. The results indicate that e-students showed to possess critical thinking cognitive strategies as they studied subject contents and sent tasks citing reliable sources of information, preferably primaries, they specified criteria details to support the issuance of owns judgments, wielded logical arguments for or against when making contributions and commenting those of their academic peers; they freely expressed their thought using a respectful language towards their academic peers’ ideas, and they adopted an analytical attitude to their labor, socio-personal and institutional context. It is concluded that the electronic discussion forum, by asking questions that encourage divergent answers, is an ideal teaching strategy to develop and strengthen critical thinking skills in the university e-student.

Palabras clave : Critical thinking; cognitive strategies; divergent question; electronic discussion forum; naturalistic method.

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