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With the assistance of a grant from Washington’s Higher Education Coordinating Board, a team at Washington State University (WSU) developed a fine-grained tool for assessing student outcomes for seven critical thinking dimensions, which statistically correlate with the most recognized dimensions of critical thinking. We piloted the WSU Guide to Rating Critical Thinking with a small number of faculty and now, with funding from FIPSE, we extended this work to larger groups of WSU faculty and statewide.
We made substantial progress in implementing the Guide across WSU’s curriculum and identifying aspects of best practice in the classroom. We have had more than 300 faculty use the rubric in various courses across the disciplines on our campus and in Distance Degree courses. In addition, working with the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, we implemented the rubric into courses offered in WSU’s Distance Degree Program (DDP), as well as in The Bridge, WSU's online learning environment. We are also incorporating the rubric university-wide into all program-level design and development projects. Our focus is on improving students' critical thinking abilities, and on identifying practices that will inform statewide and national dissemination.
Our efforts at statewide dissemination have been equally successful. We continue to hold retreats with faculty from the two- and four-year public institutions in our state. With additional funding from another U.S. Department of Education grant, we were able to collaborate for three separate meetings with K-20 educators in the state of Washington.
The objectives for our grant included the following: 1) A replicable model for assessing the outcomes of broad General Education goals at a large, public university: successful startup projects at Washington’s five other public universities; all courses designed for DDP exposed to and heavily encouraged to use the Guide.
2) A set of courses distributed throughout Washington State University’s General Education curriculum promoting the development of a shared definition of critical thinking skills and providing assessments of effective teaching and learning related to these skills: all participating faculty have revised their assignments and altered their syllabi.
3) An objective means of faculty self-assessment of teaching effectiveness based on students' progress toward learning goals.
4) Statewide dissemination efforts to articulate critical thinking expectations between two- and four-year institutions: overwhelmingly positive feedback from statewide faculty (60 faculty from 11 different institutions) attending the CT retreat in September 2002; have invited the SBCTC to give presentations at the faculty retreats, and we sent a group of five faculty to participate in the February conference hosted by the Washington Center.
5) A book-length edited collection describing successful, assessment-friendly teaching methods and setting out the assessment data that establish the effectiveness of those methods: over twenty chapters have been written by different faculty participants; we are currently looking for a publisher.
ONLINE REFERENCE:
Washington State University: Critical Thinking Website
http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu
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William Condon
Project Director
Washington State University
Campus Writing Programs
Pullman, WA 99164-5046
Tel: 509-335-2268
Fax: 509-335-3212
View Personal Web Site
Diane Kelly-Riley
Project Co-Director
Washington State University
Campus Writing Programs
Pullman, WA 99164-5046
Tel: 509-335-2313
Fax: 509-335-3212
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