Engaging Freshman Engineers Using the
Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking
Abstract
This
paper presents an exercise, or series of exercises, developed
by the authors for their Introduction to
Engineering course. Two major course components are critical thinking and departmental presentations.
The critical thinking framework includes eight elements of thought:
purpose, question at issue,
information, inferences, concepts, assumptions, implications, and
point of view. There are seven
different engineering disciplines
taught at the school, each in their own department. Each department
gives a class long presentation as part of the course. The developed assignment is given for each
department presentation with the intention of reinforcing elements from the university’s
critical thinking
framework and improving student engagement in departmental presentations. Student survey responses
indicated that students found the assignment effective in meeting some of the course goals, such as
improving their critical thinking skills. An analysis of selected students’ work
on these assignments
indicate that most students had some success in identifying salient
purposes,
concepts, and
questions at
issue for each engineering discipline for which there was a department presentation.
It was also clear
that
point of view was an element with which students consistently struggled.