Comprehensive

VIRTUES
  •  Some of the forms of analysis will be familiar to the instructor educated in philosophy
  •  May cumulate to a larger purpose than the exercises covered in single chapters
  •  May include chapters that help address the instructor’s pedagogical purposes or a group of students’ particular needs, e.g. scientific or legal reasoning, media literacy.
VICES
  •  Some of the forms of analysis will not be familiar to the instructor
  •  May not have much coherence, and what coherence there is may require more time than a course/module offers
  •  Breadth often (especially regarding fallacies) extends beyond an author’s expertise, leaving serious weak spots  that may be hard for an instructor to identify before actually using it, making specialized texts a better choice
  •  Generally more expensive for students
TIPS:
  • Is the set of skills unified or cumulative?  Specific goals provided by the text will help you design your assignments, and give your course/module coherence. Otherwise, an instructor must have a strong vision to guide the course /module, design overarching objectives, and select the component means
  • Fallacies tend to work best taught in conjunction with the positive structures of reasoning from which they deviate, unless taught separately using the “critical questions” model which takes some time.
CLASSIC:
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