Introducing TLAs addressing critical thinking skills in a bachelor and a master engineering course

Abstract

Critical thinking skills are listed in the learning goals of any university engineering degree. Nevertheless, it can be hard to find teaching and learning activities (TLAs) directly targeting the development of these skills in the courses constituting the curricula. The development of these skills is frequently implicitly assumed. However, if such learning goals are formulated, but not assessed explicitly, the curricula could have issues not being constructively aligned. In this article, we list some of the typical challenges and assumptions concerning critical thinking skills and then describe the development of TLAS targeted at training and assessing these skills. This is done for two case studies, one course in the first (bachelor) year and one course at the master level. This partly addresses the ongoing discussion in literature on whether critical thinking skills are general or discipline-specific: they are both.