Work in progress - Pedagogical practices for teaching critical thinking skills to CSET students

Ample evidence exists that employers seek graduates who can think critically and therefore make sound decisions. These skills are especially important to employers interested in hiring computer science, engineering, and technology (CSET) graduates. While liberal arts students are taught to think critically through written assignments, pedagogy relative to critical thinking seems to be lacking in CSET courses. A research project is being developed to determine best practices for teaching CSET college students to employ critical thinking when learning technical material. This pedagogy will require students to continually and interactively present logical support for calculations and other technical information presented in the text and by faculty. Classes where critical thinking pedagogy is being used will be observed and students and faculty will be interviewed relative to their perceptions of these teaching methodologies. An analysis of findings will be presented in a paper. The long term benefits of this study will be that CSET graduates will be better prepared to make decisions and solve problems they will encounter in the diverse and technical workplace.