The Conversation on Critical Thinking Joins Local and Global Voices

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Jennifer Brady

I recently featured an opinion piece by Dr. Cynthia A. Suopis who is the former Director of University Without Walls at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and currently a distinguished lecturer. In that piece, entitled “Face-to-Face or Online Instruction? Is That the Best Question?” Dr. Suopis challenged several assumptions made by some over the quality of traditional versus online and blended learning options available to students today.

Today, I am featuring Dr. Suopis again, but on another topic and with a different point to make. Namely, much of what we feature and discuss here, thanks to the nature of academia and the reach of today’s Internet-based technologies, is part of a larger, global conversation among thinking people with colleagues around the world. This blog may often seem like UMassOnline’s small community in private conversation about issues affecting just us, but in truth our faculty and students and other contributors often speak to concerns of international scope and interest.

For example, in his “Eyes on Indonesia” blog, Andrew Greene, who is a teacher, freelance journalist, writer, University Without Walls student, and photographer working in Jakarta, recently featured the words of Dr. Suopis in a post he wrote entitled Learning to Think. He writes, “University of Massachusetts professor Cynthia Suopis likes to demonstrate the difference between standard thinking and critical thinking by giving an analogy of a river running through a town.” He then cites Dr. Suopis’ analogy, which I would urge all who are interested in critical thinking take a moment to read on Mr. Greene’s blog.

A hundred years ago, the world’s smartest people in various regions may have had their voices heard around the world, but it was significantly harder to achieve and took considerably longer. Today’s thought leaders have a 24×7 platform and international reach. Without a doubt, there’s been a significant increase in tempo; a vast change advanced by the number and diversity of voices today enabled to join the conversation. This post is just a great example of how today’s academic leaders and their important issues have found a national and international stage via the Internet.

If you haven’t as yet taken advantage of this reach, this platform, and this worldwide online community of thoughtful people, I hope you will, starting here and starting soon.