I just ran across this article from the Associated Press. Here’s an excerpt:
“A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.”
Does this apply to our institution?
That seems to be consistent with what we found several years ago when we did the CCTST. Although, I do think there are issues with such a long and complex test taken out of the context of class – not sure if that is really measuring the students’ best effort. Also, critical thinking takes place in a variety of formats not conducive to a multiple choice test – there are limits to what you can measure.
I’d love to see some form of assessing critical thinking that is embedded in the life of the class.
Anyone explicitly doing that?