This course is an introduction to the basic concepts of critical thinking with a focus on effective decision making and practical reasoning skills. The central goal of this course is to empower students to think more clearly and analytically about their beliefs and to be more effective in arguing for well-reasoned conclusions and solutions. Students will critically interpret, synthesize, analyze and evaluate information and language use for formal and informal fallacies, argument forms, deductive and inductive logic, and other methods of argument evaluation. Students will be expected to recognize and avoid common barriers to critical thinking as well as apply the ideas of the course to real-world issues.