Critical analysis
R20–0717 EART11300 ASYNC ONLY
Introduction
By working through the content here you will develop an approach to analysis that you can use with any information source or artefact.
Critical analysis is key skill to support you to identify your own informed opinion on a topic. A cornerstone of critical analysis is note-making. We have already covered note -making earlier in the semester. Here we are going to use note-making to act as the first stage of your critical thinking to support you as you build your analysis of what ever source you may be looking at, be it an article, a mineral or a diagram.
Critical analysis
We are going to use a three step approach to critical analysis. These three steps will guide you towards being more critical in your analysis. You can apply the steps to a range of different academic activities such as reading articles, looking at data or examining a fossil to name a few.
Each of the steps leads to the next and you will need to complete the three steps to reach a critical conclusion. Remember that you will need to document all of your thinking using a good note-making technique, think back to week five.
Here are the three steps:
- Learn: you should focus upon selecting the core concepts and key facts.
- Connect: you should focus on noticing where things fit together. Record the connections that you see using a mind map or annotations to your original notes.
- Create: is where you get your thesis for your paper, your topic for your presentation or your idea for your next project. Make sure to write down your conclusions as you go! Think of a way to make them easily distinct from your notes on “others”.
In this next section you will work through each of the 3 steps. This is a useful opportunity for you to practice this strategy so that you can make use of it in your academic career.
Step 1. Learn something new
Start by making use of your preferred note-making technique. If you haven’t considered this then you may want to have a look back at the content in week 5.
In this first step think about what is new to you. Critical thinking requires new input of some sort, a new idea, new facts or a new perspective. If you are merely going over what you already think, it is unlikely you are being critical!
You will need to assemble and document the new content by taking notes from the information or artefact that you are analysing. In this step it is important to consider what you are making a note of.
- What do you notice or observe?
- What is new that you didn’t know previously?
- Are there facts to note down — dates, formula, words, descriptions?
- What concepts are new to you and what might you need to understand better?
Activity — Practice
You should have a set of rocks minerals and fossils similar to the image below. Using the questions above to analyse the fossil from the set.
Make notes in your workbooks using your preferred note-making technique. Include what you know about the item, alongside questions that might help you learn more about the item
Step 2. Connect: contextualise them within your prior knowledge
This step is where you connect what you have learnt with what you already knew, increasing your understanding of the materials and topic.
As you learn information you can organise it and connect it to what we already know to contextualise that information.
As you are reading and come across new material, note it down and ask yourself questions such as..
- What else do you know about this topic?
- What connections can you make between what you already knew and the new information?
Activity — Practice
Go back to your notes from the previous step.
For each piece of knowledge you highlighted in the previous activity, answer one of the above questions to help contextualise and connect it to what you already know about the topic.
Now draw the connections using images and words in your notes.
Step 3. Create: Using your new understanding, come up with an original opinion or idea.
After you have learnt the new information, and made connections to what you already understood, you will start to see new ideas and understanding on the topics and materials. A helpful way to clarify your new ideas is to summarise your new knowledge and the connections you have made. This will allow you to draw conclusions (your own critical analysis!) that will be your own original additions to the topic.
You will have your stance, your argument and most of all you will have your notes to reflect your thinking throughout.
Activity — Practice
Summarise the notes you have made from the previous two activities (in no more than one paragraph).
Consider what ‘new’ thing you would like to say about notes that you have made. Where are the notes leading you — what can you infer/predict/suggest from your notes. What is your idea, your original thought?
In a couple of sentences write a statement that identifies your idea.
Evaluation of information
You will also want to consider evaluating your information sources and the information sources that others are using to inform their opinions.
Read more about how to do this in this blog post here.
(Embed link to blog)Evaluating Information Sources https://medium.com/my-learning-essentials/evaluating-information-sources-553ed110811f
Summary
You have practised an approach to support you in developing your critical analysis skills and how you can make your notes work to support that process. Now all you need to do is put it into practice.
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