Critical Thinking

The UniLOA’s authors consider critical thinking to be an active process where students use skills of evaluating, analyzing, assessing, interpreting, questioning and restating a problem or challenge. Effective problem-solving is bolstered by the individual’s skill in applying critical thinking skills to their academic lives and their lived experience.

A skilled critical thinker should be able to examine and understand the fundamental qualities of problems, collect and analyze critical data, draw appropriate interpretations and conclusions, examine broad-based problem-solving options and effectively communicate and implement appropriate solutions. 

Self Awareness

Self awareness as a construct can be defined in multiple ways, but when those definitions are examined to identify common elements, consistency among the many definitions emerges. Self-awareness deals with awareness from the both internal and external perspectives. Those dual perspectives allow individuals to understand their place within the environment and to express behaviors and cognitions that compliment harmony between self and other. Self awareness is not a skill that is inherent within the human condition. To be sure, active self awareness comes only after conscious self-reflection comes to be a part of the lived experience.

Communication

In academic circles, there are many definitions of the construct “communication.” Yet, most contemporary definitions share common themes within them, including:

• An active process where one person conveys a message to another through a variety of forms, including speaking, writing, or other non verbal cues.
• Communication may be intentional or unintentional
• That different levels of communication exist depending on the relationship between the sender and the receiver
• That it provides a means by which needs can be expressed from one person to another
• That communication attempts to in some way impact the behavior of the “other”

Our effectiveness in communicating with others requires an understanding of the environment, relationship to the other and how effective the symbols chosen for the expression of needs, wants, or perspective are in affecting behaviors.

Diversity

Diversity is an area of interest within higher education as it reflects an individual’s understanding and appreciation of “differences.” Those differences include such things as the recognition of values held by different people, cultures, ethnicity, politics, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation and a host of others. The understanding and appreciation of difference is necessary to establish and maintain pluralism in a way that will be complimentary to such things as social responsibility, cohesion and advancement of social structures, the bolstering of individual and group identity, equality and respect.

But diversity goes beyond mere acceptance of difference, which in many cases may be mere tolerance. Indeed, moving beyond simple tolerance allows individual members of a social group the capacity to appreciate the positive contribution different people can make to the collective good of that social group, whether limited to small groups of individuals or on a global scale.

Citizenship

Citizenship entails an understanding of one’s membership in a variety of “groups,” from the campus community to the global level, and a demonstrated commitment through behaviors that reflect active participation within those groups. Knowledge of the various rights, privileges and associated duties of citizenship are things in which students should be actively engaged; whether those are of a political, social, or legal nature.

Membership and Leadership

An understanding of the various types of relationships a student will experience is necessary as they identify with groups, whether those groups are formal or informal. Within formal groups, individuals should recognize how they can contribute and be active in their participation, whether that participation is the holding of a recognized office with prescribed duties, or a member that contributes to the common good through active participation that supports growth and development of the collective body.

Relationships

Interacting with others can be on a variety of levels including social, professional, intimate or others. An individual’s ability to influence others, to contribute to the meeting of self needs as well as the needs of others and to form individual identity as a result requires active management. The ability to effectively manage the “connectedness” between self and others allows individuals to be more productive to their own internal growth and development as well as to positively contribute to the growth and development of others.