I am struggling to find a "fair" process for grading students in my basic and advanced courses on Critical Thinking and for my Critical Thinking for Economics course. Some of my issues with traditional ways include the following:
1. Evaluating what they remember about what I taught is the easiest way but flies in the face of developing independent thinkers who are confident in their reasoning.
2. Using any of the standardized tests would most likely necessitate a degree of "teaching for the test".
3. Evaluating Skill Improvement assumes I can fairly assess their beginning and ending levels with an acceptable degree of accuracy.
4. Evaluating student's application of the tools & techniques introduce in the course is like a hammer in search of a theoretical nail.
I would love to do purely formative assessments but I am required to determine A,B,C . . .
I feel I am having some success conducting exit interviews and having students argue for their grades but this lacks transparency.
I am toying with the concept of "quality of effort" and looking into a quality of effort rubric and self-assessment and/or gap analysis.
When replying please do follow good critical thinking style:
Rather than merely Agree or Disagree please justify your opinion
As you have pointed out there are many options. Form more traditional approaches, I like using the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy. It's helpful to know how high up the levels the students perform.
A paper with a problem relative to the students' areas of study might work. They could be charged with solving the problem using the steps in critical thinking that you present in class. It's more work than a paper and pencil test but it might be closer to what you are trying to measure.
Good luck and stay well.
I've recently stumbled upon some literature related to active open-minded thinking that might contain some psychological scales that might be adapted as useful student assessments. I have only just skimmed the surface here, but Baron, Scott, Fincher an Metz (2015) in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition might be a good place to start.
Good responses from Madelaine and Peter.
Paul - why not a combination of your 'list' of strategies - especially in terms of 'scaffolding'? So start with a mini-test (say 10%) that is essentially 'rote-learning' testing i.e. what are the underlying principles and then scaffold up to a final 40-60% 'test' that is perhaps a reflection on a critical case/scenario. The marking rubrics would reflect Bloom's verbs - as you progress in the assessments from 'describing' to critical reflection.
Case reports and problem-based learning would be appropriate methods.
Maybe one can look at the applications aspect i.e. what the student will be able to do better if they have an improved critical thinking capability?
Appendix B offers interesting grading scheme for 7 critical thinking traits
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