MISSION: CRITICAL is an interactive instructional site devoted to critical thinking, or applied logic and analysis, a required general education course for students at many colleges and universities around the country, including almost all the approximately one million students at California's state-supported institutions of higher education (UC, CSU, and community colleges). It has been in continual development since 1995, when it first came on-line. As an individual, essentially spare-time effort--the only institutional support came in the form of a reduction of my teaching load in 1996--by someone who teaches mostly comparative and world literature classes, Mission: Critical has been as much a personal hobby as it has been a professional project. I was very gratified that someone nominated the site for a GII Award. But I have been even more gratified by the scores of messages I have received from students and instructors--and not just in critical thinking classes, but in law schools, nursing programs, and even training programs in private industry.

This tour will take you through the development of Mission: Critical, from its origins as a set of supplementary interactive exercises for my critical thinking classes, to its latest incarnation (still under construction) as a completely on-line course for college credit. The on-line course pages (identifiable by the new logo on the right) are still under construction, and not all their links are currently functional, but I wanted to give you some idea of where Mission: Critical is heading. Most of the materials for the on-line pages can also be found in the original section, accessible from the Main Menu. During the tour, you will see a number of innovative usages of web technology: interactive client-side imagemaps for Venn diagrams, annotated texts for readings, resource materials for other instructors, and so on.

The tour consists simply of a series of screens, with explanatory information in a frame at the top. To proceed from screen to screen, click on the right arrow at the top of the screen (or the left arrow to go back one screen). The rest of each screen is still fully functional; you will be prompted to click on some links, but you can depart from the tour and wander around whenever you wish. If you lose the tour's frame, use your browser's "Back" button to return. Please note that, in one or two cases, the added frame for this tour may cause truncation of other "no scrolling" frames. Thanks for your time and consideration. I hope you enjoy Mission: Critical!

David Mesher
English Department
San Jose State University
mesher@email.sjsu.edu