Assessing critical thinking
In assessing your students, how long into a course should you be concerned that a student may have a critical thinking issue? Some students I see halfway through a 3 month course still struggling, when should I intervene?
Greg,
With the quick turn over of students like you have you need to focus in on getting your students into the thinking process as soon as you can. Also, I would challenge them as they leave the course in 3 weeks to continue their critical thinking development so they can be successful in their career area.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
what should I do when my course is only 3 weeks long ? I get new students every 3 weeks. So by the time I see the problems really starting to show I get 20 new students.
Mary,
This is an ongoing challenge for many instructors. I use a number of game like tasks early in the course to get my students to thinking about how to solve problems. One activity is that I give each student a bag of Lego pieces and ask them to construct an object. I assign different objects to different students so they have to think within themselves as to how to find pieces that will fit together to build the object. This is a very interesting time in class as they often become frustrated because they have to think and they don't like doing that in a college classroom. This activity really gets them going and we build on these experiences throughout the course.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I am having the same problem, I teach desgn courses and find that many younger students today do not possess problem solving skills. I am generally severl weeks into the course when it becomes evident.
Rather than always answer their questions, I answer a question with a question and hopefull lead them towards the way to solve their problem and after several time with them I will talk about problem solving skills. Sometimes I get positive results, sometime not.
Dario,
Keep repeating this message to your students because it is critical to their career success. Medicine is based upon procedures but within patient treatment there is a lot of critical thinking required. They need to be able to listen to and understand what the patients are saying as they provide treatment.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Every interaction with medical assitants students I tried to get through to them how important critical thinking is in their everyday life, and especially in nursing. This is a skill that if they invest the time and energy now in their very first courses, the benifit later on will be invaluable.
Elizabeth,
This has to be tough for you since the courses are so short. By the time you have an idea of a problem the course is ended. Maybe you faculty can share with each other and get an idea of how to help students as they progress through the course sequence.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Many of our courses are only a few days. 2 weeks in length. It is nearly impossible to know how much they are struggling with the material, and how much is critical thinking.
Laurel,
Very good statement. Critical Thinking is one of those things that usually becomes more refined with increased use. Keep giving great advice to your students.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
Every interaction with my nursing students I tried to get through to them how important critical thinking is in their everyday life, and especially in nursing. This is a skill that if they invest the time and energy now in their very first courses, the benifit later on will be invaluable.
Jennifer,
Using the formative assessments of the course to determine the issue, it would generally be within the first 25% of the course (in this case, by sometime during the third week) that intervention would be appropriate.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
