Critical Thinking Assessment Report 12/13 AY

Analysis and Interpretation/Reflection on Results or Trends: Based on the data and the experience, the
group’s consensus is that:
1. as a school, we need to address how to incorporate more critical thinking into the curriculum –
especially since this is one of our general education SLOs.
2. the assignment and rubric need to be tweaked to better assess critical thinking
3. the procedure needs to be tweaked to produce more reliable data
4. faculty need to be normed at the beginning of the semester to the rubric so that there will be
fewer splits and more valid results
5. the curriculum in ENGL 111 may need to be examined and adjusted to provide a better
foundation for critical thinking
6. work done in a more controlled environment (in-class) produces better results
Plan for Improving the Assessment Process and/or Student Learning: The following lists CTAG’s plan for
improving this assessment:
1. create one or two new CLAs in fall semester
a. make sure questions are obviously not open-ended
b. create a grading key to accompany each CLA
2. provide students with some brief material regarding the function and form of a memo
3. include as one of the CLA task a request for students to create a matrix of sorts that shows
which documents they thought were useful and valid, and which ones weren’t
4. revise the rubric and reorder the criteria
5. be clear how many documents students to refer to and reflect this requirement in the rubric