An Assessment of Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Critical Thinking Skills Guided by the Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Ralston ◽  
Anne E. Larson ◽  
Cathy L. Bays ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering

scholarly journals Critical Thinking Development In Undergraduate Engineering Students From Freshman Through Senior Year: A 3-Cohort Longitudinal Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A Ralston ◽  
Cathy L Bays
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Senior Year ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
The Impact

Critical thinking is considered a necessary learning outcome for all college students and essential for academic and career success.  There are many challenges to developing a comprehensive approach to teaching and assessing critical thinking skills. Although the literature has many examples of the incorporation of critical thinking and assessment into courses, longitudinal studies following engineering students through their undergraduate career are lacking.  This study assessed the impact of using the Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework to enhance undergraduate students’ critical thinking skills with the hypothesis: There will be a significant increase in undergraduate students’ critical thinking abilities from the freshman to the senior year with the explicit and strategic incorporation of critical thinking assignments. The research question was, “How do the critical thinking skills of undergraduate engineering students change as they progress through the engineering program with the explicit and strategic incorporation of critical thinking assignments?” The study was a descriptive, longitudinal study of three engineering student cohorts as they progressed through the four year undergraduate program. The study was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board. There was a statistically significant increase in critical thinking scores over the four years for each of the three cohorts. Integrating and evaluating critical thinking assignments into engineering curricula is possible, but a major challenge to critical thinking assessment using a holistic rubric is training engineering faculty in their use.  The results are encouraging, and participating faculty agree; but sustaining these efforts to imbed critical thinking assignments throughout the engineering college curriculum will require effort and administrative support.

scholarly journals Board 137: Critical Thinking Skills in Non-calculus Ready First-year Engineering Students

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizzie Santiago ◽  
Anika Pirkey ◽  
Mustapha Animashaun ◽  
Melissa Morris
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
First Year

scholarly journals Development of Problem-Based Kinematics Teaching Material to Improve Students' Critical Thinking Skills

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Inung Diah Kurniawati
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Teaching Material ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Physics Teaching ◽  
Average Value ◽  
Material Development ◽  
Average Analysis

Physics learning needs to be given by giving problems so that students can gain experience from their thinking abilities. Student's mindset will be more focused if they are able to think critically. The purpose of this study was to develop problem-based teaching material to improve informatics engineering students' critical thinking skills. With this teaching material development, students are expected to be able to maximize their thinking skills. This study used development research design that aimed to produce a problem-based physics teaching material. The trial subjects for this teaching materials were 3 lecturers and 12 informatics engineering students from University of PGRI Madiun. From this study, quantitative and qualitative data were obtained. The obtained data from the assessment of lecturers and students will be analyzed by average analysis technique. From the average value obtained, the feasibility level of problem-based teaching material will be determined. Based on the results of the analysis, the average value of 3.33 with good category were obtained. Furthermore, the results of this teaching materials development can be used in the implementation test. Teaching materials were needed by students to gain direct experience in learning physics.

scholarly journals A Systematic Approach To Teaching Critical Thinking Skills To Electrical And Computer Engineering Undergraduates

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karla Conn Welch Conn Welch ◽  
Jeffrey Hieb ◽  
James Graham
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Computing Methods ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Implicit Instruction ◽  
Incoming Freshmen ◽  
Critical Thinking Instruction ◽  
Pilot Implementation

Coursework that instills patterns of rigorous logical thought has long been a hallmark of the engineering curriculum.  However, today’s engineering students are expected to exhibit a wider range of thinking capabilities both to satisfy ABET requirements and to prepare the students to become successful practitioners.  This paper presents the initial results from a systematic effort to incorporate broader critical thinking instruction and assessment into electrical and computer engineering education as part of a university-wide quality enhancement program.  All incoming freshmen are given explicit and implicit instruction in critical thinking in ENGR 100: Introduction to Engineering and other engineering fundamentals courses, using the Paul-Elder framework of critical thinking to define and operationalize critical thinking.  This critical thinking foundation is reinforced later in the disciplinary courses so that students integrate critical thinking with the basic principles and practices of engineering.  In the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) program, at the sophomore level, students use critical thinking skills which were developed during their engineering fundamentals courses, to analyze requirements and constraints which would apply in real-world design projects.  At the junior level, similar use of critical thinking is applied in an introductory computing methods course; and at the senior level, critical thinking skills are again strengthened and assessed in the capstone design course and in the professional issues and current topics seminar.  The latter course emphasizes understanding of professional ethics and current topics in electrical and computer engineering.  Initial data from this pilot implementation indicates statistically significant improvement in critical thinking skills in ECE students who have progressed through this sequence, and as a side benefit, it appears that writing skills also improve.

scholarly journals The Effect of Portable Electrical Motor Trainer Motor Media To Enhancing Creative and Critical Ability

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisbulloh Ahlis Munawi ◽  
Agus Suwardono ◽  
Elsanda Merita Indrawati
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Motor Control ◽  
Electric Motor ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Electrical Engineering ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Inference Strategy

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of using portable electric motor control trainer media on increasing creative thinking skills and critical thinking skills in electrical engineering students. This research is an experimental study using Pretest-Posttest group design. The subject of the study is electrical engineering students at Nusantara University, PGRI Kediri consisting of 27 students. The level of creativity is measured through aspects of fluency, flexibility, authenticity, and elaboration, while aspects of critical thinking ability are by giving simple explanations, building basic skills, giving further explanation, applying strategies and techniques, and concluding. The study determines the increase in creative and critical thinking skills using N-Gain analysis. The result shows that: 1) the students' creative thinking skills are increased by learning using a portable type electric motor control trainer media that was categorized high on aspects of fluency and elaboration, and categorized based on aspects of flexibility and authenticity; 2) the students' critical thinking skills increase after participating in learning by using portable type electric motor control trainer media which is high in the aspects of elementary classification, inference, strategy and tactics, and categorized based on the aspects of basic support and advanced classification.

scholarly journals Investigating the Impact of Model Eliciting Activities on Development of Critical Thinking

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Frank ◽  
Jake Kaupp ◽  
Ann Chen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Learning Assessment ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Model Eliciting Activities ◽  
The Impact

This paper presents a portion of a study on how model eliciting activities (MEAs) impact critical thinking development in first year engineering. Model eliciting activities (MEAs) are realistic problems used in the classroom that require learners to document not only their solution to the problems, but also their processes for solving them. Studies have shown MEAs to be valuable in helping students to develop conceptual understanding, knowledge transfer , and generalizable problem--‐solving skills. This study is investigating the impact of the MEA- integrated course on students’ development of critical thinking skills. Ultimately, the team aims to determine whether the MEA-integrated course facilitates students’ critical thinking. During the fall semester of the 2012/2013 academic year three instruments will be used to evaluate the critical thinking skills (CTS) of first year engineering students. These instruments will be used as both a pre--‐ and post--‐test in order to benchmark CTS of the incoming first year students, and determine the effectiveness of MEA instruction on developing student critical thinking ability. These instruments are the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Cornell Z), the International Critical Thinking Essay Test (ICTET) and the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). This paper will present the preliminary findings from analysis of the MEA results and pre and post tests from the study.

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