ThinkerAnalytix and God and the Good Life

The development of “critical thinking” is often cited by faculty, students, employers, and administrators as one of the most valuable outcomes of courses in the humanities. However, teaching and assessing these skills is challenging, particularly in large courses, due to the complexity of traditional systems of formal and informal reasoning and the extensive practice required, which is time-intensive to assess. In spring 2021, the instructional faculty of a large lecture course at the University of Notre Dame adopted ThinkerAnalytix, a web-based platform that teaches critical thinking through a mastery-based “argument mapping” course. This intervention aimed to increase the course’s intellectual rigor and improve students’ critical thinking skills. The platform resulted in significant improvements, with average critical thinking pre- and post-test growth of 16% and 12% across two sections. However, its introduction initially caused a notable drop in student satisfaction and did not affect their self-perceived growth. Over the next three semesters, instructors implemented strategies to integrate ThinkerAnalytix more effectively into the course. These efforts successfully maintained gains in critical thinking while mitigating negative perceptions, offering a replicable model for improving critical thinking instruction in large philosophy courses, with potential applications across disciplines.