Instructors can facilitate critical thinking by:
Encouraging students to find relationships between pieces of information;
Asking students a question and let them mull over their ideas and responses for a few days;
Asking students to justify and explain their positions;
Encouraging exploration of new ideas and materials to share with the class; and
Asking open-ended questions instead of closed-ended questions like yes/no.
As the course and comfort with the instructor/peers/materials progresses, the instructor should include more critical thinking activities.