This online Distance Education course is a basic introduction to logic and critical reasoning. It is designed to equip the students with the tools and concepts needed to deal with both everyday and more technical arguments, as well as the skills to analyse, and resolve, everyday confusions, ambiguities, and fallacies. Topics covered include the distinction between logic and rhetoric; the analysis and resolution of ambiguities and fallacies; validity and inductive strength of arguments; elementary classical propositional and predicate logics; term, modal, multi-valued and relevance logics. Required Text: J. Woods, A. Irvine and D. Walton, Argument: Critical Thinking, Logic and the Fallacies, 2nd ed., Pearson Canada, 2004.

Evaluation: 10 online small group discussions (worth 10% of the final grade), 9 short online quizzes  one for each course module (40%), and an on-campus or remotely proctored computer-based final exam during the examination period (50%). Apart from the final exam, all the activities are totally online and do not require your physical presence on UBC Vancouver campus. In addition, an off-campus final exam may be arranged at many UBC partner exam centres worldwide (see http://students.ubc.ca/enrolment/courses-registration/distance-education/exam-off-campus).