Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course

TH!NK is a new initiative at NC State University focused on enhancing students’ higher-order cognitive skills. As part of this initiative, I explicitly emphasized critical and creative thinking in an existing bacteriophage discovery first-year research course. In addition to the typical activities a...

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Autor principal:	Susan Carson
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	American Society for Microbiology 2015
Materias:	Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Biology (General) QH301-705.5
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/e5cd3921956745bb87487d7d5f094282
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:e5cd3921956745bb87487d7d5f0942822021-11-15T15:04:04ZTargeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course10.1128/jmbe.v16i2.9351935-78851935-7877https://doaj.org/article/e5cd3921956745bb87487d7d5f0942822015-12-01T00:00:00Zhttps://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jmbe.v16i2.935https://doaj.org/toc/1935-7877https://doaj.org/toc/1935-7885TH!NK is a new initiative at NC State University focused on enhancing students’ higher-order cognitive skills. As part of this initiative, I explicitly emphasized critical and creative thinking in an existing bacteriophage discovery first-year research course. In addition to the typical activities associated with undergraduate research such as review of primary literature and writing research papers, another strategy employed to enhance students’ critical thinking skills was the use of discipline-specific, real-world scenarios. This paper outlines a general “formula” for writing scenarios, as well as several specific scenarios created for the described course. I also present how embedding aspects of the scenarios in reviews of the primary literature enriched the activity. I assessed student gains in critical thinking skills using a pre-/posttest model of the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT), developed by Tennessee Technological University. I observed a positive gain trend in most of the individual skills assessed in the CAT, with a statistically significant large effect on critical thinking skills overall in students in the test group. I also show that a higher level of critical thinking skills was demonstrated in research papers written by students who participated in the scenarios compared with similar students who did not participate in the scenario activities. The scenario strategy described here can be modified for use in biology and other STEM disciplines, as well as in diverse disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.Susan CarsonAmerican Society for MicrobiologyarticleSpecial aspects of educationLC8-6691Biology (General)QH301-705.5ENJournal of Microbiology & Biology Education, Vol 16, Iss 2, Pp 148-156 (2015)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Biology (General) QH301-705.5
spellingShingle	Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Biology (General) QH301-705.5 Susan Carson Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course
description	TH!NK is a new initiative at NC State University focused on enhancing students’ higher-order cognitive skills. As part of this initiative, I explicitly emphasized critical and creative thinking in an existing bacteriophage discovery first-year research course. In addition to the typical activities associated with undergraduate research such as review of primary literature and writing research papers, another strategy employed to enhance students’ critical thinking skills was the use of discipline-specific, real-world scenarios. This paper outlines a general “formula” for writing scenarios, as well as several specific scenarios created for the described course. I also present how embedding aspects of the scenarios in reviews of the primary literature enriched the activity. I assessed student gains in critical thinking skills using a pre-/posttest model of the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT), developed by Tennessee Technological University. I observed a positive gain trend in most of the individual skills assessed in the CAT, with a statistically significant large effect on critical thinking skills overall in students in the test group. I also show that a higher level of critical thinking skills was demonstrated in research papers written by students who participated in the scenarios compared with similar students who did not participate in the scenario activities. The scenario strategy described here can be modified for use in biology and other STEM disciplines, as well as in diverse disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
format	article
author	Susan Carson
author_facet	Susan Carson
author_sort	Susan Carson
title	Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course
title_short	Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course
title_full	Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course
title_fullStr	Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course
title_full_unstemmed	Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course
title_sort	targeting critical thinking skills in a first-year undergraduate research course
publisher	American Society for Microbiology
publishDate	2015
url	https://doaj.org/article/e5cd3921956745bb87487d7d5f094282
work_keys_str_mv	AT susancarson targetingcriticalthinkingskillsinafirstyearundergraduateresearchcourse
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Targeting Critical Thinking Skills in a First-Year Undergraduate Research Course

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