(379t) Improving Undergraduate Success through Effective Critical Thinking

Employers report that most of their first-time hires, usually recently graduated students, lack critical thinking skills and problem-solving dexterity. Tennessee Tech’s Undergraduate Success Through Effective Critical Thinking (iUSE-CT) pilot study has two major goals regarding academic success and knowledge acquisition: 1) enforce first year freshmen chemical and electrical engineering students’ retention rates, and 2) improve graduation rates. The methodology implemented consists of deliberately training students to identify and use critical thinking skills through individual activities as well as group tasks. Assessment is a combination of a retrospective Need for Cognition survey and pre- and post-treatment Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT). The CAT is a widely used product of a decades-long National Science Foundation (NSF) funded effort that assesses a well-defined range of CT skills using metacognition. The study design includes two cohorts of students divided into treatment and control groups. The design uses a two-level full-factorial matrix in which students are either included in the treatment or control groups as freshmen or sophomore students in required, critical-path courses in either chemical or electrical engineering. The courses are paired across disciplines at analogous points in the students’ development and the CAT is administered at the beginning of freshman year, and again at the end of the first course (and in subsequent terms). Critical thinking training includes sessions on skills and fast-paced, in-class assignments and extended take-home work using situational open-ended frameworks. Most of the exercises are presented in a laboratory setting where students have a significantly longer class-time to accommodate extended discussion with their classmates and the instructors.