Developing Critical Thinking Among University Students Through Curriculum-Embedded Participatory Activities

The development of students’ critical thinking is an important aim of many tertiary institutions today and is regarded as essential for graduates. In current times, digital tools are omnipresent in the everyday lives
of learners who are already familiar with creating content outside their formal school settings. While students’
online creations are often considered informal out-of-school activities, there is a need to understand how
activities could be leveraged to help students develop critical thinking for academic purposes. One means of
nurturing critical thinking is to develop learning environments that facilitate and support opportunities for
students to engage in a participatory culture. This research elaborates the development of an active community of participatory culture to facilitate critical thinking through using knowledge blogs in a higher education program. Positive outcomes were observed in this study; the themes included social support and co-learning. This study calls upon further exploration into the understanding of the effects from participatory activities for learning in school and how participatory pedagogy could be applied across other domains.