C168 Critical Thinking and Logic, catalog number PHIL 3010, is a three-CU general education course in systematic reasoning: identifying and clarifying a problem, planning an approach to it, gathering the information the problem actually needs, and surfacing the assumptions hiding underneath the whole exercise. One quirk trips people up before they start. The catalog text for this course still opens with the words Reasoning and Problem Solving, so students searching by description sometimes think they have the wrong entry. They have the right entry. C168 is the legacy code, and the catalog also carries D265 Critical Thinking: Reason and Evidence for newer plans. Your Degree Plan decides which one you owe, not the catalog.
What a reasoning course actually scores
Almost every student arrives at PHIL 3010 expecting a vocabulary course. Learn thirty fallacy names, learn valid and invalid, done. That expectation survives about one page of a real deliverable, because the assessed skill is not recognition. It is reconstruction: taking a messy piece of prose that was written to persuade, and rebuilding it as a claim supported by stated reasons, so that the reasons can be tested one at a time.
The reconstruction step is where marks are won and lost. A paragraph from an opinion column contains a conclusion that is never stated in a single sentence, three reasons that are stated but scattered, and one or two premises the author considered too obvious to write down. Pulling that apart into an ordered structure is genuinely difficult work, and it is difficult in a way that has nothing to do with knowing the Latin name for an appeal to popularity.
The second thing the course scores is the difference between two questions people constantly merge. Question one: does the conclusion follow from the reasons given? Question two: are the reasons true? An argument can be perfectly structured and built on a false premise, in which case the structure is fine and the conclusion is worthless. An argument can have entirely true premises assembled in a way that supports nothing. Written work that treats these as one question reads as untrained, and evaluators are quick about it, because that single confusion is what the course exists to remove.
Third, and least expected, C168 scores your handling of your own reasoning. The assumption-surfacing strand is not there to make you better at catching other people out. It is there because the assumptions that most distort a decision are the ones held by the person making it. Submissions that identify five unstated premises in the source material and none in the author's own analysis tend to come back.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
WGU keeps the scored detail for each course inside your Course of Study rather than in the public catalog, so the first practical move in C168 is to open your rubric and count the aspects. Every aspect is judged on its own against a three-point scale, and a score of 2 in each aspect is what passes a task. There is no averaging across aspects and no compensation: a brilliant fallacy analysis does not rescue a thin section on assumptions.
Where your version of the course is assessed by submitted work, that scoring model dictates the outline. Give every scored aspect its own heading, worded with the rubric's own noun rather than a synonym you prefer. In a reasoning course this feels redundant, because the analysis flows naturally from one step to the next and headings interrupt the flow. Score the paper the way an evaluator does and the objection dissolves. They are not reading for flow. They are looking for a specific analytic move and awarding a point when they find it.
The word budget, worked. Take a rubric with five scored aspects and directions asking for roughly 1,500 words. Reserve 120 words for an opening that names the source text and the conclusion you have identified in it, and 100 words to close, leaving about 1,280 for the scored body. Five into 1,280 is 256 words per aspect. Treat that as both floor and ceiling. An aspect answered in 80 words has almost certainly named something without demonstrating it, which in a logic course means you asserted a fallacy rather than showed one. An aspect running past 450 has usually annexed its neighbour, and the starved neighbour is what sends the task back.
Two aspects deserve deliberate overweight in reasoning work. The reconstruction aspect, because everything downstream depends on getting the argument's actual shape right, and the assumptions aspect, because it is the one students underwrite most often. Take 50 words from each descriptive aspect and give 125 to each of those two. The total is unchanged and the paper now spends its length where the analysis is hardest.
A structure that fits an argument analysis
Where your task directions supply an arrangement, follow their arrangement. Where they leave it to you, this shape maps cleanly onto how reasoning aspects are usually written and it keeps the two questions above from collapsing into one.
| Section | What belongs in it | How it gets scored |
|---|---|---|
| The source and the claim | What text you are analysing and the single sentence you take to be its conclusion | Rarely scored alone, but a misidentified conclusion invalidates every later aspect |
| Reconstruction | The argument rebuilt as numbered premises leading to a conclusion, in your own plain words | Scored for faithfulness to the original, not for elegance |
| Unstated premises | What the author needed to be true and never said, made explicit | Scored for whether each addition is genuinely required by the argument |
| Structural test | Whether the conclusion follows if every premise is granted | Scored on separating this from the truth question; merging the two is the standard return |
| Truth test | Whether each premise survives contact with evidence, taken one premise at a time | Scored for premise-by-premise handling rather than a global verdict |
| Weaknesses named | Specific reasoning failures shown in the text, with the passage quoted or pinpointed | Scored for demonstration; a label with no passage attached earns nothing |
| Your own position | What you conclude, what would change your mind, and the assumptions you are carrying | Scored for self-application, which is where thin papers stop early |
| References | The source text and anything used to test a premise, in the required style | Scored wherever the rubric names citation |
Numbering the reconstruction is worth doing even when nothing requires it. Once premises carry numbers, the structural test and the truth test can both refer to premise three without ambiguity, and the evaluator can see at a glance that you tested each one rather than gesturing at the argument as a whole.
Evidence craft when your evidence is somebody else's reasoning
C168 has an unusual evidence problem. Your primary source is an argument, and arguments cannot be summarised loosely without changing them. A paraphrase that softens a universal claim into a general tendency has quietly repaired the argument for the author, and the fallacy you were about to identify has disappeared.
Practices that keep reasoning submissions clean:
- Quote the operative sentence exactly when you allege a reasoning failure. Short, precise, and cited. Everything else can be paraphrased.
- Preserve quantifiers. All, most, some and none are the load-bearing words in an argument, and swapping one for another is the commonest accidental misrepresentation.
- Name the reasoning problem and then show it. The label is the shorthand; the demonstration is the evidence. A paper full of labels reads like a glossary.
- Test premises against sources appropriate to the claim. A factual premise needs a factual source. A definitional premise needs a definition, and the definition needs to be one the author would accept.
- Distinguish a bad argument from a false conclusion in writing. Saying the argument fails is not saying the conclusion is wrong, and evaluators watch for that distinction.
- Cite in the style your directions require and keep the reference list matched to the in-text form. Reasoning courses still lose aspects on attribution.
One habit marks out strong work here. The best submissions state the strongest version of the argument they are about to criticise, then criticise that version. It takes forty words, it is unmistakably the harder thing to do, and it is the clearest available evidence that the writer is reasoning rather than scoring points.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects are scored independently, so returns in C168 are almost always local. The paper was not bad. One aspect asked for two moves and got one.
- Every scored aspect has a visible heading using the rubric's own noun, so nothing has to be hunted for.
- The conclusion identified at the start is the conclusion tested at the end. Drift between them is a silent failure that costs several aspects at once.
- Every alleged reasoning failure is anchored to a quoted or pinpointed passage.
- Structure and truth are handled in separate passages, not blended into a general verdict.
- The writer's own assumptions appear somewhere in the document, stated plainly rather than confessed apologetically.
- Nothing in the analysis relies on the author's motives. Attacking the source rather than the argument fails the course on its own terms.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted without a grade penalty, so a return costs time rather than standing. In a six-month flat-rate term, time is the entire budget. A three-CU general education course that consumes five weeks because of two rework cycles is a course you did not close this term, and general education courses are exactly the ones students plan to clear quickly.
Where your version of C168 is exam-facing, the boundary is fixed. Objective assessments at WGU are proctored, so preparation is the whole of what we do: drilling the argument forms until reconstruction is automatic, working practice items on validity against truth, and giving you a straight read on whether you are ready. We do not sit assessments, we are never present during one, and portal credentials are never requested.
Six mistakes that cost time in C168
- Treating fallacy names as verdicts. Writing that a passage commits a hasty generalisation is a claim, and like every claim in this course it needs the passage and the reasoning shown underneath it.
- Confusing a valid argument with a true one. Validity is about the connection between premises and conclusion. Truth is about the premises. The course is built on keeping them apart.
- Improving the argument while summarising it. A tidier version of the author's reasoning is a different argument, and analysing it answers a question nobody asked.
- Skipping the problem clarification step. The catalog description puts problem identification and clarification first for a reason. Analysis of a vaguely stated problem produces vaguely stated findings.
- Gathering information before framing the question. Search first and you will find support for whatever you already believed, which is the exact bias the course is designed to expose.
- Leaving your own assumptions out. The self-application aspect is the one students most often skim, and it is usually the shortest section in a returned paper.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study and the task directions, along with the source text if one was supplied. Work comes back aspect-mapped: the argument reconstructed with numbered premises, structure and truth tested separately, unstated assumptions identified with the reason each one is required, and a walkthrough explaining why the analysis is arranged the way it is. The point of the walkthrough is transfer. Reasoning is the skill every later course quietly assumes you have, so learning the pattern here pays for itself repeatedly.
If your Degree Plan shows D265 rather than C168, say so when you write in. The two courses cover overlapping ground and the catalog carries both, but the deliverables and materials differ, and there is no benefit in preparing against the wrong course of study.
Questions students ask about C168
Is C168 the same course as PHIL 3010?
Why does the catalog description say Reasoning and Problem Solving?
Can you sit a proctored assessment for this course?
Stuck on an argument analysis this week?
Send your Course of Study rubric, the task directions and the source text. You get an aspect-mapped draft with the argument reconstructed premise by premise, plus a walkthrough that transfers to every later course.
Where C168 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.