This assignment was designed to enhance understanding of core concepts in an introductory logic course. Each worksheet requires students to apply logical principles they learn in class to different aspects of their own lives. The worksheets are then collected into a booklet that provides information (mostly in symbolic form) about their background, goals, and interests. After being checked for accuracy, the booklets created by one class can be used as teaching tools in subsequent classes. This allows future students to practice interpreting propositional logic sentences, truth tables, proofs, and Venn diagrams as they begin to learn these skills themselves.

The aim of this approach is twofold. The most immediate goal is to bridge the gap between abstract principles and “real-life” applications, which students often have difficulty seeing even when many current examples are used in class. The second goal is to encourage students to see themselves as creators (not just consumers) of educational content while also giving them an opportunity to learn about issues that matter to their peers.

The assignment is designed to be customizable. Worksheets on different topics can be added or omitted to correspond to the logical skills covered in a course. Each worksheet (with associated instructions) is independent of the others, so they can be completed in any order. The first time through it may be useful to demonstrate in class how each worksheet could be filled out, but in future semesters the work of past students can be used to illustrate various ways of completing the assignment.

In my own course, I used this assignment in conjunction with two free OER texts:

• Craig DeLancy’s A Concise Introduction to Logic (Open SUNY Textbooks, 2017. Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License), which can be found at http://textbooks.opensuny.org/concise-introduction-to-logic/. Part I covers the skills needed for the propositional logic pages of this assignment.
• Matthew J. Van Cleave’s text Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, Version 1.4. (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License), which can be found at https://www.oercommons.org/courses/introduction-to-logic-and-critical-thinking-2. Sections 2.14-2.17 and Chapter 4 cover the skills needed for the categorical logic and fallacies pages of this assignment.

This assignment was designed with the support of the University System of New Hampshire’s Academic Technology Institute in summer 2017. My hope is that instructors who adapt this assignment and develop new sections will share their adaptations freely, expanding the range of possibilities available to others.