Engaging Freshman Engineers Using the Paul-Elder Model of Critical Thinking

Table 1. Sample list of prompts given to students for the Analyze the Discipline exercise. 
Analyze the Discipline: Chemical Engineering 
The main purpose of Chemical Engineering is: 
The main question at issue in chemical engineering is: 
Chemical Engineering takes place within the context of: 
The information Chemical Engineers use is: 
Some implications and consequences of Chemical Engineering are: 
The key assumptions Chemical Engineers make are: 
The point of view of Chemical Engineering is: 
The main concepts in Chemical Engineering include: 

---

Departments were given the “Analyze the Discipline” exercise in advance and informed that students 
might ask questions related to the assignment. No rubric was made for grading this exercise, nor were 
examples of good responses provided to students or the department faculty. For the contribution to 
course grade, TAs scored these as participation points only; they were not graded thoroughly. 
4. Results 
For this paper, samples from all twelve sections were reviewed randomly by the instructional facultyto 
get an overall understanding of the quality of student responses. Four of the eight elements of the Paul-
Elder framework were analyzed in detail to gauge the effectiveness of the assignment. Purpose and 
implications/consequences of the discipline were examined to gauge the students’ general understanding 
and impressions of the disciplines. Assumptions and point of view were examined because the 
instructors felt these were the more difficult elements to grasp. Additionally, for 27 select students, 
assignments for each of the seven disciplines were reviewed closely. This was done to assess whether 
the students’ understanding of the critical thinking framework improved over repeated use of the 
elements. The teaching assistant (TA) for those sections selected some students in the following 
categories: 1.) consistent high achievers, 2.) consistent low achievers, and 3.) improvers. All seven 
assignments for these students were read by faculty and compared. Students were also given an IRB 
approved survey at the end of the semester with two specific questions about all the critical thinking 
exercises. Only 404 students took the survey since some students had dropped by this point and some 
did not participate since the survey was optional. 
Survey Results 
Two questions on an end-of-semester survey related to effectiveness of the critical thinking instruction 
and exercises. The results from the survey are shown in figures 4 and 5. 
Question 1: As a result of the critical thinking assignment and the “analyze the discipline” exercises for 
each department presentation, my critical thinking skills are: