Disclosed herein is a software application that provides a “critical thinking exercise” that presents a problem, solvable by a user exercising critical thinking skills. Each critical thinking exercise conforms to an archetype (e.g., a framework or a set of specifications) based on which each critical thinking exercise is created by an author, for a user. The critical thinking exercise archetype facilitates the exercise of user critical thinking skills. The user can analyze a number of author specified investigation scenes, identify the problem, select author pre-defined hypotheses, and form arguments supporting or falsifying the hypotheses with user-selectable items such as: evidences, inferences, conclusions, and conclusion confidence levels provided in the critical thinking exercise by the author. A solved problem entails that collection of user-formed arguments that resolves the problem to the highest level of certainty possible. The framework also includes tools that facilitate the author in creating each critical thinking application.
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING A CRITICAL THINKING EXERCISE