Maneuvering Collaborative Learning Technologies to Uncover Critical Thinking: A 'Solenoid' Model

Critical-thinking (CT) is a higher order cognitive activity which is consequential for human decision-making. We propose a 'solenoid' model that demonstrates how technological tools can be used as scaffolds to advance the development of CT dispositions and abilities of learners in an online-classroom. 15 graduate students enrolled in a course on Human-Computer Interaction, were systematically engaged in an alternating series of individual and collaborative tasks, employing tools that enabled elicitation of learners' ability to analyze, evaluate and reason, and, further, to enable synchronous collaboration. The collaborative tasks involved 'interactive' and 'constructive' engagement by letting learners build and reline concept-maps respectively. The individual tasks involved 'critical' and 'reflective' engagement by letting learners evaluate and reflect on the mapping task respectively. For the latter task, online semi-structured clinical interviews were conducted with all the students. Here, we present a detailed case-study to demonstrate how the solenoid model can be used to elicit CT skills in a completely online class and how it can be mapped on to learners' reasoning process.