Enhancing Critical Thinking Across The Undergraduate Experience: An Exemplar From Engineering

Abstract

Faculty in a large, urban school of engineering designed a longitudinal study to assess the critical thinking skills of undergraduate students as they progressed through the engineering program. The Paul-Elder critical thinking framework was used to design course assignments and develop a holistic assessment rubric. The curriculum was re-designed to include deliberate teaching of critical thinking and assessment in at least one key course for every student each year of their undergraduate curriculum. The critical thinking scores for seniors using the holistic rubric were significantly higher than their baseline critical thinking scores as freshmen (p = .004). This case-study can serve as an exemplar for other units, departments, or programs to model or replicate.