Intellectual Toolkit
Some skills and habits of mind are so fundamental to the development of one’s intellectual capacities and to lifelong well-being that they constitute a toolkit for life and work throughout college and beyond.
Today’s rapidly changing, interconnected world demands graduates with the ability to think critically, to conduct research amidst an overabundance of information sources, and to explore profound questions and approach problem-solving with imagination and creativity, both individually and as members of a team. Students must also learn to make a range of informed life decisions that will sustain them and enable them to put their education to good use in the world. Cultivating these multipurpose toolkit skills explicitly and intentionally is a crucial dimension of BU students’ preparation for a broad and ever-evolving spectrum of personal, educational, professional, and civic opportunities.
The required formal introduction to understanding and practicing the essential skills of critical thinking, research and information literacy, teamwork/collaboration, and creativity/innovation will be reinforced and extended in almost every course students take at Boston University. Students’ participation as juniors and seniors in the Hub’s signature Cross-College Challenge (XCC) will further develop and refine their communication, teamwork, creativity, and information literacy skills.
Critical Thinking
The ability to think critically is the fundamental characteristic of an educated person. Critical thinking is required for just, civil society and governance, prized by employers, and essential for the growth of wisdom. Critical thinking is what most people name first when asked about the essential components of a college education. From identifying and questioning assumptions, to weighing evidence before accepting an opinion or drawing a conclusion—all BU students will actively learn the habits of mind that characterize critical thinking, develop the self-discipline it requires, and practice it often, in varied contexts, across their education.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will both gain critical thinking skills and be able to specify the components of critical thinking appropriate to a discipline or family of disciplines. These may include habits of distinguishing deductive from inductive modes of inference, methods of adjudicating disputes, recognizing common logical fallacies and cognitive biases, translating ordinary language into formal argument, distinguishing empirical claims about matters of fact from normative or evaluative judgments, and/or recognizing the ways in which emotional responses or cultural assumptions can affect reasoning processes.
- Drawing on skills developed in class, students will be able to critically evaluate, analyze, and generate arguments, bodies of evidence, and/or claims, including their own.
Research and Information Literacy
Scholarly research—the process of posing problems, designing effective investigative strategies, collecting and evaluating information, drawing conclusions, and presenting findings—drives the creation and dissemination of new knowledge in and across all academic disciplines, professions, and walks of life. Today’s information explosion places a particular requirement on anyone doing research to develop the abilities associated with information literacy—knowing how to locate needed information, assess the accuracy of sources, and use them to good effect. BU’s mission as a research university embraces the conviction that research and information literacy should be central to an undergraduate education. By learning from scholars on the BU faculty how new knowledge is created and disseminated, and by conducting or participating in research, BU students join a community of inquiry with a commitment to the pursuit of knowledge that crosses borders and connects generations.
All Writing, Research, and Inquiry courses (found in the Communication capacity) also develop the learning outcomes of the Research and Information Literacy area and fulfill one Hub requirement in each of these areas.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will be able to critically assess both scholarly and public-facing sources, recognizing a variety of ways that sources can be credible; use sources ethically in domains such as attribution of ideas and treatment of human subjects; and interpret and analyze information.
- Students will demonstrate understanding of the overall research process and its component parts. As a result, they will be able to formulate good research questions or hypotheses, use disciplinary modes of inquiry, select and deploy sources strategically to address research questions or hypotheses, and contribute to knowledge production.
Teamwork/Collaboration
Training in and the practical experience of teamwork teaches the process of innovation, develops leadership, and fosters knowledge of one’s own strengths and appreciation for those of others. Collaboration defines the 21st-century workplace. Employers rely increasingly on teams—groups of people with different backgrounds and training who tackle projects jointly—and they identify the ability to collaborate with these diverse groups as an essential skill for almost every position. Civic life in an increasingly interdependent world also calls more and more for the ability to collaborate with people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives, build consensus, and compromise for the good of a broader purpose.
Learning Outcomes
- As a result of explicit training in teamwork and sustained experiences of collaborating with others, students will be able to identify the characteristics of a well-functioning team.
- Students will demonstrate an ability to use the tools and strategies of working successfully with a group or team. This includes, but is not limited to:
- An ability to assign and undertake roles and responsibilities amongst members of a team.
- An ability to give and receive feedback within their own team and to meaningfully process this and other feedback, such as from additional teams, from an instructor, and/or in self-reflection.
- An ability to engage in meaningful group reflection that inspires collective ownership of results.
Creativity/Innovation
BU students across all fields of study will benefit from learning how to think in new ways, imagine new possibilities, take new approaches, and/or make new things. Creative activity is a source of deep human satisfaction and common good. In addition, the ability to generate and pursue new ideas is quickly becoming a prerequisite for entry into the skilled workforce, which places a premium on applicants’ creative skills and potential for contributing to creativity’s more applied offspring, innovation. BU graduates should understand how the creative process moves from need or desire to design, to draft, to redesign, to execution; they will have personal experience of taking risks, failing, and trying again; and, in this way, they will have developed the patience and persistence that enables creativity to come ultimately to fruition.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will demonstrate understanding of creativity as a learnable, iterative process of imagining new possibilities. This can be observed in three interrelated ways:
- Students practice creative and innovative thinking as an iterative process, for example by revising their ideas or their methodologies in response to feeback from peers or instructors.
- Students will provide a metacognitive reflection, in which they evaluate their choices in relation to risk-taking or experimentation and identify individual and institutional factors that promote and/or inhibit creativity.
- Students generate a product based on the above processes. (See learning outcome #2.)
- Students will be able to exercise their own potential for engaging in creative activity by conceiving and executing original work either alone or as part of a team.
