Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses

Renée S. Cole,Gil Reynders,Juliette Lantz,Suzanne M. Ruder,Courtney L. Stanford

doi:10.1186/s40594-020-00208-5

Abstract

BackgroundProcess skills such as critical thinking and information processing are commonly stated outcomes for STEM undergraduate degree programs, but instructors often do not explicitly assess these skills in their courses. Students are more likely to develop these crucial skills if there is constructive alignment between an instructor’s intended learning outcomes, the tasks that the instructor and students perform, and the assessment tools that the instructor uses. Rubrics for each process skill can enhance this alignment by creating a shared understanding of process skills between instructors and students. Rubrics can also enable instructors to reflect on their teaching practices with regard to developing their students’ process skills and facilitating feedback to students to identify areas for improvement.ResultsHere, we provide rubrics that can be used to assess critical thinking and information processing in STEM undergraduate classrooms and to provide students with formative feedback. As part of the Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM (ELIPSS) Project, rubrics were developed to assess these two skills in STEM undergraduate students’ written work. The rubrics were implemented in multiple STEM disciplines, class sizes, course levels, and institution types to ensure they were practical for everyday classroom use. Instructors reported via surveys that the rubrics supported assessment of students’ written work in multiple STEM learning environments. Graduate teaching assistants also indicated that they could effectively use the rubrics to assess student work and that the rubrics clarified the instructor’s expectations for how they should assess students. Students reported that they understood the content of the rubrics and could use the feedback provided by the rubric to change their future performance.ConclusionThe ELIPSS rubrics allowed instructors to explicitly assess the critical thinking and information processing skills that they wanted their students to develop in their courses. The instructors were able to clarify their expectations for both their teaching assistants and students and provide consistent feedback to students about their performance. Supporting the adoption of active-learning pedagogies should also include changes to assessment strategies to measure the skills that are developed as students engage in more meaningful learning experiences. Tools such as the ELIPSS rubrics provide a resource for instructors to better align assessments with intended learning outcomes.

Highlights

Why assess process skills? Process skills, known as professional skills (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012), transferable skills (Danczak et al, 2017), or cognitive competencies (National Research Council, 2012), are commonly cited as critical for students to develop during their undergraduate education (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012; American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training, 2015; National Research Council, 2012; Singer et al, 2012; The Royal Society, 2014)
The process skill rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in student written work were completed after multiple rounds of revision based on feedback from various sources
The categories for each rubric will be discussed in terms of the evidence that the rubrics measure the relevant aspects of the skill and how they can be used to assess STEM undergraduate student work

Summary

Introduction

Why assess process skills? Process skills, known as professional skills (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012), transferable skills (Danczak et al, 2017), or cognitive competencies (National Research Council, 2012), are commonly cited as critical for students to develop during their undergraduate education (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012; American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training, 2015; National Research Council, 2012; Singer et al, 2012; The Royal Society, 2014). The assessment of process skills can provide a benchmark for achievement at the end of an undergraduate program and act as an indicator of student readiness to enter the workforce Assessing these skills may enable instructors and researchers to more fully understand the impact of active learning pedagogies on students. Despite the clear content learning gains that students can achieve from active learning environments (Freeman et al, 2014), the non-contentgains (including improvements in process skills) in these learning environments have not been explored to a significant degree Active learning pedagogies such as POGIL and PLTL place an emphasis on students developing non-content skills in addition to content learning gains, but typically only the content learning is assessed on quizzes and exams, and process skills are not often explicitly assessed (National Research Council, 2012). Rubrics can enable instructors to reflect on their teaching practices with regard to developing their students’ process skills and facilitating feedback to students to identify areas for improvement

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