Using existing assessments to track longitudinal development of students’ critical and creative thinking skills

Abstract

Learning outcomes assessment (LOA) data are most commonly collected via national surveys, alumni surveys / focus groups, and locally developed surveys. While these methods collect important affective information about students and alumni, detailed data describing students’ actual skills and perceived skills are needed to facilitate targeted improvements to courses and programs and enhance the LOA initiative. I implement a triangulated LOA strategy that coordinates three essential perspectives of LOA: intention, achievement, and perception. Focussing on problem solving assessments, I develop and validate a problem solving profile, a program-level developmental rubric for problem, and a student survey. To my knowledge, the profiling tool and program-level developmental rubric for assessing problem solving are the first such tools described in the field. Using pilot data from the 2018-2019 academic year, I demonstrate how these tools and methods generate data educators were previously unable to access.