Abstract:

Society has been impacted in recent decades by the advancement of technologies, which have been changing in increasingly short spaces of time the way we live and relate in all aspects, including how we learn. It is important to prepare students for a critical and responsible use of data that will make them individuals capable of evaluating, synthesizing, reflecting, learning and having positive attitudes, even with the excess of information that exists and whose limits between the virtual and real world are increasingly smaller.

In this sense, the Soft Skills Lab of a Portuguese public university considered that critical thinking should be one of the competencies to be added to the syllabus of the Data Science undergraduate students. This degree has been started in this university since 2020 (three years). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to show the importance of critical thinking in preparing these students for professions that are still largely unknown, contributing to innovation, collaboration, communication, creativity and the ability to solve complex problems, and finally, to an analytical and responsible management of data.

Through the evaluation made with a universe of N=333 students in the pedagogical monitoring we can perceive, besides the students' satisfaction, that knowing how to question, evaluate content and sources of information, are important competences, as well as creating environments in which critical thinking flourishes and that teachers should ask questions, encourage the expression of different opinions and stimulate students to carry out practical activities that make them apply their knowledge.

Keywords:

Critical Thinking, Data Science, Soft Skills.