Bill Condon Washington State University wsuctprojectu

1. Critical Thinking in the Classroom: Identifying, Assigning, Evaluating, and Assessing What We Value Bill Condon Washington State University http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu

2. The Challenge, As I See It • Assigning writing is de facto good practice. (OERI, 1995) • “Writing is thinking on paper.” Carlos Baker, 1975 • “Having to think about it, instead of just write it, took some getting used to.” Danielle Ozaki, first-year student, 2001.

3. The Challenge, As I See It Cicero, De Oratore III • [Socrates] separated the science of wise thinking from that of elegant speaking, though in reality they are closely linked together…. This is the source from which has sprung the undoubtedly absurd and unprofitable and reprehensible severance between the tongue and the brain, leading to our having one set of professors to teach us to think and another to teach us to speak.

4. The Challenge, As I See It Ron Takaki, from his syllabus: • “We’re going to strengthen our critical thinking and our writing skills. These can be revolutionary tools if we make them so.”

5. Step One: Identify the Construct • See handout: WSU Guide to Rating Critical and Integrative Thinking • The Problem of Definition--moving counterintuitively • Time and energy sink • Frustrating--and futile?

6. The Nature of Critical Thinking • Socially constructed • Situated • In culture • In disciplines • In level of development and maturity

7. Communicating Expectations Across the Curriculum • “Ruler” must be flexible and adaptable • Measurement must apply to SLOs • A single ruler, to measure disparate products • Adaptation is the key

8. What We Set Out to Do • Develop a fine-grained tool for evaluating student learning outcomes. • Identify a diagnostic focused on specific features for student progress. • Provide a means to help students understand and meet faculty expectations. • Provide a tool faculty could use both for grading and evaluation purposes. • Provide a means for faculty to reflect upon and revise their own instructional goals, assessments and teaching strategies.

9. Faculty report that the rubric helps them “clarify [previously] vague evaluation criteria.” provide language to “model appropriate participation” & “responsible…effective participation.” help students learn to “synthesize [their own] comments to highlight key issues.” And “ask questions to encourage elaboration and clarification.” “establish a community” based on academic engagement. “Create interaction by establishing replies and responses as important.” Working on Assignments

10. Sample Adaptation: Entomology

11. Critical Thinking Studies at WSU • Compared the critical thinking rubric with WSU’s Writing Assessment program. • Examined critical thinking gains in courses that used the rubric with a sample that did not. • Explored faculty development issues. • Looked at implications for students.

12. Findings • Gains from freshman to junior years—Critical thinking was significantly higher among juniors than among freshmen. But even the writing of juniors had only a mean of 3.1 on a 6 point scale. • Comparisons to WSU’s writing assessment—As critical thinking scores went up, freshman Writing Placement exam scores and junior Writing Portfolio exam scores went down. • Gains in courses when rubric is used—when the faculty in this project integrated the WSU Critical Thinking Rubric into their instruction and assessment, evidence of student gains in critical thinking increased dramatically.

13. Critical Thinking:four courses with rubric/three without

14. Putting It Together: Assignments that Foster Critical Thinking • Weekly, performance-based assignment • The same task, done weekly (or regularly and frequently), as long as it involves facilities worth developing, can show progress from week to week, thus demonstrating students’ learning. • First/last week “paired” assignment • Giving similar tasks (again, tasks worth doing) at the beginning and at the end of the course can provide evidence of ‘value added.’ • Assignment to be assessed with scoring guide • Developing and sharing a detailed rubric for evaluating students’ work helps them address the dimensions of good writing (or other learning) that the rubric describes. If the assignment sets a task that can be evaluated as fully as possible by the rubric, then the rubric becomes a yardstick for assessing students’ learning.

15. Critical Thinking Assignments, continued • Inquiry-based assignment • Asking questions that we don’t know the answer to can provide rich evidence of students’ abilities as lifelong learners. These assignments necessarily move beyond having students divine “what the professor wants.” • Collaborative assignment • Since collaboration gets the learning process out in the open, we can devise richer and more varied ways to document that learning, and we can more easily see where the learning is going right or wrong. • Peer response/process assignment • These activities also get the learning process out in the open, where we can document it. They also provide evidence of important life/work skills.

16. Weekly Inquiry Activity

17. There was a vital changed of belief about Earth and our solar system before and after 1500'. Tell us a little bit about this important event. Ane tell us what is your idea on this change? advantage? or disadvantage? How does it affects our life? Organizations such as the WTO have created an arena for nations of the world to interact on economic and trade levels. Are institutions such as the WTO and the UN contributing to what our anthropology professors call "cultural homogenization?" Bringing nations together to share information and strategies increases out exposure to the happenings of the rest of the world. Is this leading to the breakdown of cultural barriers and making us all more like each other? Can we clearly define who or what is East Asian or European or Latin American anymore? Why or why not? If you do believe that this cultural homogenization is taking place, and defining lines between cultures are fading, is this a good or a bad event? Please support your claim. Weekly Inquiry Activity: Samples

18. A Second ExampleObjectives Statement: Before Initial statement: Due Tuesday, January 18, no later than 9:10 a.m. Hand paper copy to me (in class) and post your statement to our class's Speakeasy Studio & Café. Examine the set of faculty objectives for WSU courses, the General Education objectives for World Civilizations, and my Course Objectives for WC 111 (above). Write a 3-5 page statement of objectives that fully and thoughtfully addresses at least the following questions: • Which objectives seem most important to your educational agenda? • What other objectives do you, personally, bring to this course? How will you address your objectives? • What past experiences, in school and otherwise, prepare you to address the course objectives and your own objectives? • Which objectives do you believe will be most difficult for you to achieve this term? How and when do you plan to achieve them? • Which objectives will be easiest for you to achieve this term? • What other courses are you taking (or have you taken) that can help you achieve these objectives? • Which objectives do you feel you have already achieved?

19. Evaluating Student Work for Critical Thinking • Guide to Rating Critical Thinking (Handout) • Entomology Rubric: Includes dimension on quality of writing. • Fails to follow established guidelines for usage, composition, style, and / or other requirements • Fails to provide list of references, or list is incomplete, or citations in text and reference list do not match • Fails to meet minimum page length required for term paper • Generally follows the guidelines listed in Entom 401 Coug Prints under "Peer Review Guidelines"

20. Evaluating Student Work for Critical Thinking • Physics Rubric: Recasts student perspective as scientifically consistent choice: • Identifiesthe law(s) of physics that are applicable to the problem. • French Rubric: Adopts language of progress: • DEVELOPING……………………………………………DEVELOPED • Shakespeare Rubric: Student-friendly language • This sounds basic but it's not a cinch, and I for one certainly had my share of college English classes that never encouraged us even getting to this rung of critical thinking. A "report" on the Globe theater, for example, does not reach even this first step.

21. Evaluating Student Work for Critical Thinking • Philosophy Rubric: Geared toward self-assessment in preparation for teacher conference. • Where are you in the paper? • Nowhere: You’ve simply repeated what you’ve heard in class without thinking about what you’re saying. • Hiding in there somewhere: You have something to say but it’s hiding among direct quotes. Think about the problem, consider what others have said and then tell me what YOU think. • BANG! Right in the middle: You have considered both your own experience and your research to draw your own conclusions. You present your conclusions clearly.

22. The Good News: • We CAN promote what we value • By tying assessment to SLOs, we can make what happens in our classrooms matter • By insisting on SLO-based assessments, we will: • Avoid reductive assessments that undervalue our work • Satisfy our accrediting agencies • Respond to calls for accountability • Gain evidence that helps us improve what we do

23. Writing and Critical Thinking in the Classroom: Identifying, Assigning, Evaluating, and Assessing What We Value Bill Condon Washington State University http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu

26. Critical Thinking:one course/two semesters

27. Assessing: The WSU Critical Thinking Rubric • Articulates seven dimensions of critical thinking derived from the critical thinking literature, local expertise, and practice. • Helps instructors improve and assess the critical thinking abilities of their students. • Demystifies the expectations of instructors for students.

28. Advantages for Students • Clarifies faculty expectations • Provides common terminology for talking about expectations and performances • Shifts emphasis from product of learning to process of learning • Improved abilities to analyze issues from multiple perspectives. • Helps weaker students gain access to course content • Highlights tension between grades and life-long learning

29. Advantages for Faculty • Contract theory • Heuristic for improving syllabi, assignments, course materials • Common language for feedback • Shifts emphasis from product of learning to process of learning • Better products to grade • Focus on improvement--for self and students

30. Advantages for College • Promotes broad competency across course boundaries • Focuses efforts on common value • Allows assessment of SLOs • Generates useful comparisons • Provides data that lights the way to improvement

31. Now You Try • Adapting the Rubric • Revising an assignment • Assessing essays (including longitudinal dimensions) • Assessing dimensions of a class’s progress

32. Discussion!

33. Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom: Communicating OurExpectations and Making Our Jobs Just a Little Easier, a Little More Fun Bill Condon Washington State University http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu

34. WSU Faculty Adaptations • Expert-Jigsaw groups. • Guidelines for drafts of papers (from Entomology to Philosophy). • Physics problem solving. • Crops/Soils heuristic. • Lab report guidelines. • Guidelines for small group facilitators. • Guidelines for online discussion.

35. Preliminary Findings • Gains from freshman to junior years—Critical thinking was significantly higher among juniors than among freshmen. But even the writing of juniors had only a mean of 3.1 on a 6 point scale. • Comparisons to WSU’s writing assessment—As critical thinking scores went up, freshman Writing Placement exam scores and junior Writing Portfolio exam scores went down. • Gains in courses when rubric is used—when the faculty in this project integrated the WSU Critical Thinking Rubric into their instruction and assessment, evidence of student gains in critical thinking increased dramatically.

36. Critical Thinking:four courses with rubric/three without

37. Faculty Development • Help faculty articulate their goals and communicate expectations to students. • Serve as a jumping off point for discussion of critical thinking for people with very different approaches to learning. • Surface tension between grading and life-long learning goals. • Provide financial incentives to adopt the rubric--much more effective than workshops.

38. Implications for Students • Indicates that the greatest gains by WSU juniors reflected improved abilities to analyze issues from multiple perspectives. • Shows that the least gain existed in students’ abilities to articulate their own viewpoints relative to an issue. • Helps at-risk students gain access to course content. • Maintains the tension between grades and life-long learning.

39. Critical Thinking Website URL connects to: FIPSE-sponsored WSU Critical Thinking Project Guide for Rating Critical Thinking Teachers’ adaptations of the Rubric Information about upcoming events Partnership information And more! http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu/