Increasingly, national stakeholders express concern that U.S. college graduates cannot adequately solve problems and think critically. As a set of cognitive abilities, critical thinking skills provide students with tangible academic, personal, and professional benefits that may ultimately address these concerns. As an instructional method, writing has long been perceived as a way to improve critical thinking. In the current study, the researchers compared critical thinking performance of students who experienced a laboratory writing treatment with those who experienced traditional quiz-based laboratory in a general education biology course. The effects of writing were determined within the context of multiple covariables. Results indicated that the writing group significantly improved critical thinking skills whereas the nonwriting group did not. Specifically, analysis and inference skills increased significantly in the writing group but not the nonwriting group. Writing students also showed greater gains in evaluation skills; however, these were not significant. In addition to writing, prior critical thinking skill and instructor significantly affected critical thinking performance, whereas other covariables such as gender, ethnicity, and age were not significant. With improved critical thinking skill, general education biology students will be better prepared to solve problems as engaged and productive citizens.

National stakeholders are becoming increasingly concerned about the inability of college graduates to think critically. Research shows that, while both faculty and students deem critical thinking essential, only a small fraction of graduates can demonstrate the thinking skills necessary for academic and professional success. Many faculty are considering nontraditional teaching methods that incorporate undergraduate research because they more closely align with the process of doing investigative science. This study compared a research-focused teaching method called community-based inquiry (CBI) with traditional lecture/laboratory in general education biology to discover which method would elicit greater gains in critical thinking. Results showed significant critical-thinking gains in the CBI group but decreases in a traditional group and a mixed CBI/traditional group. Prior critical-thinking skill, instructor, and ethnicity also significantly influenced critical-thinking gains, with nearly all ethnicities in the CBI group outperforming peers in both the mixed and traditional groups. Females, who showed decreased critical thinking in traditional courses relative to males, outperformed their male counterparts in CBI courses. Through the results of this study, it is hoped that faculty who value both research and critical thinking will consider using the CBI method.

In the Community-Based Inquiry (CBI) instructional method, cooperative student groups complete case study activities based on scientific literature and conduct their own laboratory investigations that address authentic community needs. This study compared critical thinking and content knowledge outcomes between traditional Introduction to Biochemistry lecture/laboratory and CBI curricula with human health case studies and local elementary school lunch nutrition laboratory investigations. CBI students experienced statistically significant critical thinking gains of medium effect size with female and male equity, whereas traditional students demonstrated no critical thinking gains with statistically significant sex disparity of medium effect size. Bifurcating student ethnicity into White and all other respondents revealed that the Other students gained statistically significantly more content knowledge in CBI than in the traditional group with a large effect size. Chemistry faculty concerned with developing both content knowledge and critical thinking skill in all students should consider using CBI not only for majors, but also for non-majors such as allied health students.

Developing the ability to think critically is an important element of undergraduate physiology education and is influenced by many factors, including the learning environment, the social context of the learning environment, and the instructor's approach to teaching. In this work, we describe online learning modules (OLM) that were designed to promote higher-order critical thinking skills in students enrolled in an upper-division Exercise Testing and Prescription course. The OLM provided students with an online learning environment in which to review clinical physiological details from authentic patient case data and develop exercise prescriptions (ExRx), by requiring students to critically analyze authentic patient case histories and collaborate on computer-based learning activities. On the basis of assessment data, we conclude that the OLM helped exercise science students develop the critical thinking skills necessary for development of effective exercise prescriptions by requiring them to think critically while concurrently reinforcing lecture-presented exercise science content.

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