Assessing critical thinking in mechanics in engineering education

Abstract

Typically, mechanics education in engineering schools focuses on communicating explicit content to students, but de-emphasizes the critical thought that underlies the discipline of mechanics. We give examples of the failure of students to apply basic principles of mechanics in solving problems. We develop assessment tools that measure critical thinking in student work, and how well mechanics textbooks engage students in critical analysis. Both tools focus on the treatment of three criteria that we judge to be fundamental, but that are commonly overlooked or undervalued: completeness of free body diagrams, consideration of physical dimension, and careful use of vectors, coordinates and sign conventions. Data collected from employing our assessment tools indicates that most of the time, students omit or misunderstand at least one critical idea when solving a problem, even when they obtain a correct answer. We also found that most of the textbooks surveyed exhibit at least one significant shortcoming pertaining to our criteria. Mechanics educators should vigorously emphasize fundamental aspects of mechanics, such as those that we suggest here, as a necessary (though insufficient) step to improve the ability of students to think critically and solve problems independently. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2006.