Teaching and Learning blog

(This is the last part of our three-part series “Goldilocks and the Three Bears of Critical Thinking.” Read part one and part two).

Empty calories or nutritious porridge?

Most students acknowledge that easy classes tend to serve the empty calories of rote memorization and regurgitation; however, when given a choice, students often pick such an option over a more rigorous course that serves the nutritious porridge of critical thinking.

We see this behavior when students “shop” for the easiest professor. In all honesty, I can’t blame them. It’s only natural that students are pathologically hung-up on grades when parents, scholarship committees, and collegiate programs are GPA obsessed.

During my 15 years of teaching introductory microbiology and anatomy and physiology to allied health students and tomorrow’s nurses, I have heard the phrase, “I have to get an A” countless times. However, a high GPA is not necessarily linked to passable work-skill competencies or even average critical thinking skills.

This is partially why standardized tests have become important screening tools for admission into colleges and graduate programs. When students say they, “have to get an A,” perhaps we should reply that an A is useless if it’s not packed with vitamins. So, how do we make a healthy porridge that students will try and perhaps even enjoy?

A recipe for porridge

Students often avoid trying the critical thinking porridge because they are afraid to fail. It’s no wonder they fear failure—society’s message is pretty clear, “We don’t have time for you to learn from your mistakes.”

The good news is we can get students to try the porridge of critical thinking and position them for success if we add pedagogical ingredients that: (1) foster a growth mindset, (2) require that students are prepared to participate in class, and (3) include context-rich assessments that provide ample opportunities to practice in the Goldilocks zone of development.

Let’s delve a little deeper into each of these ingredients.

Intelligence mindset matters

Psychologists tell us that how we perceive intelligence may affect our academic experiences. Some people have a fixed intelligence mindset, which means they see intelligence as static. In contrast, others see intelligence as cultivable, and are said to have a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset often interpret a struggle with tough course material as proof of an inherent lack of ability.

They are therefore, more likely to give up when courses challenge them and they are prone to excusing themselves from the struggle with cop-out phrases such as, “I’m just not a math person,” (or fill in your choice of discipline).

As educators, we have an important role in shaping the intelligence mindset of our students. We should emphasize that just as students can strengthen their muscles through training and pushing their boundaries, so too can they strengthen their minds through practice.

Prepared to participate

My gym teachers never made dressing out optional. We were required to come prepared to participate, otherwise we were as good as absent. The same should hold true when it comes to academic classes. If we expect students to be prepared to participate, then we can’t make being prepared to participate optional—we must require it.

To do this I use Pearson’s MyLab and Mastering platforms, which integrate Socratic coaching and immediate wrong answer feedback so that my students are redirected before misconceptions take root; this also affords them a chance to ask about missed questions in class. I don’t delude myself into thinking that everyone will do the work, but certainly more do it than if I didn’t require it.

Requiring that students are prepared to participate through a warm-up exposure to the content facilitates more meaningful content exploration in class.

Plus, because the online platform gives me diagnostic information and specifically points out where students are confused, I can practice precision training with my students instead of making assumptions about what they do or don’t understand. That optimizes our class time and keeps boredom at bay.

The Goldilocks zone for development

The work we give students must be relevant to their careers which means it must put content in context. Case studies, word problems, and reflecting on loosely defined problems are good exercises, but only if they are in the “just right” zone for student development.

That means the work can’t be too easy, nor can it be frustratingly difficult. There’s a reason we don’t use James Joyce novels to teach 6-year-olds to read.

Goldilocks wins

Goldilocks’s triumph over the bears in the forest of critical thinking doesn’t have to remain a fairy tale. We can help students navigate the forest of critical thinking by filling their prerequisite knowledge gaps, overtly teaching critical thinking, and providing context rich exercises in their zone of development.

To accomplish this, we can’t rely on teaching strategies that were designed to support the education goals of the Industrial Revolution. In this Information Age, where information is cheap and easy we must leverage technology to get students from where they are to where they need to be.

There is more than just a grade at stake. The innovators of tomorrow are in our classes, let’s not feed them to the bears.

Hear directly from Dr. Norman-McKay in her recent webinar Thinking Critically from Day ONE of Class on how to explore and apply case-based content to facilitate deeper thought and authentic learning opportunities.

(This is part two of our three-part series “Goldilocks and the Three Bears of Critical Thinking.” Read part one).

Bear-ier #2: The bear that lacks a map through the critical thinking forest

Map-less Goldilocks beat the odds when it came to escaping bears, but it’s unrealistic for us to expect that all students, or even most students, can safely navigate the forest of critical thinking without a map. However, we regularly have this expectation.

Most college faculty say they value critical thinking and most say they teach it. Indeed, I used to believe that I was overtly teaching critical thinking; but when students failed at it I realized that I had mistaken modeling critical thinking, assigning it, and expecting it for overtly teaching it.

The symptoms that I was not overtly teaching critical thinking were all there; students continuously got frustrated with higher level assignments, they complained when assigned case work, and they regularly said that they didn’t even know where to start on the critical thinking based assignments I gave them. My students were struggling to overcome bear-ier #2—the lack of a map toward critical thinking.

Time to be honest…

The truth is I wasn’t trained as a teacher—I was trained as a scientist. Many college faculty share this history with me; they too were hired for their specific discipline credentials versus their teaching credentials. Accrediting bodies evaluate institutions based in part on faculty credentials.

In general, the minimum qualification to teach college credit courses is a Master’s degree with 18 or more graduate credit hours in the discipline being taught. There’s no requirement that faculty have official training in teaching or even an iota of teaching experience. Consequently, many college faculty have very little if any training in teaching, never mind a specific course in how to teach critical thinking.

My point is that we’ve embraced a “you just do it” mindset when it comes to collegiate teaching, so it’s not entirely shocking that we’ve applied that very same mindset to critical thinking—”you just do it.”

Of course, this is garbage. You don’t “just do it” any more than you just fly a plane or you just play the piano. It takes training and it takes practice, just like learning the course content does. While we don’t expect students to learn how to read on their own without an overt curriculum, it seems we often expect self-teaching when it comes to critical thinking.

In light of this, it’s not surprising that so few students are competent at critical thinking, even after earning a college degree.

Critical thinking cartography

Unfortunately, when students fail at critical thinking faculty get frustrated and we may assume that “students just aren’t ready to think critically.” The thing is, students can think critically and they are ready to do it if we give them the tools. It’s up to us to help them overcome the barriers they face to developing their critical thinking prowess—we must give students a map to critical thinking.

This is why I developed the S.M.A.R.T. framework as map toward critical thinking. Because my courses are focused on training the healthcare team of tomorrow, I thought about how trained clinicians and scientists approach problems. I also followed the literature on the neurological aspects of how we learn and how we develop critical thinking skills.

Years of teaching and experimenting with thousands of my own students led me to distill the process into the five steps in S.M.A.R.T. These steps are easy to teach, model, and evaluate students on—and students can readily remember them. Because S.M.A.R.T. is a map for higher order problem solving, these five steps can be applied across disciplines.

Getting S.M.A.R.T. about critical thinking

The S.M.A.R.T. approach is a stepping stone style methodology that provides a cognitive scaffold for sifting through large amounts of information and applying it to solve higher order problems.

This is part one of a three-part series “Goldilocks and the Three Bears of Critical Thinking.”

Digital learning webinar series for educators

In the spirit of always learning, we have an extensive lineup of free, professional development webinars that will leave you with actionable ideas and strategies to effectively implement digital learning tools that will increase student engagement and leave you with the freedom to do what you do best: teach.

Pick and choose from over 50 webinars that span across all disciplines featuring renowned authors and digital learning leaders, like you.

Aren’t sure where to start? Check out a sampling below or visit our This is Digital Learning Webinar Series website to browse or sort by discipline.

Unable to attend live? No problem – all webinars are recorded and available to you at your convenience.

Showcase your learning

Digital credentials allow you showcase the learning you’ve achieved. When you attend one of the webinars live and complete a brief assessment at the end, you will earn a Digital Learning badge via Acclaim to share with your networks.

Happy digital learning!

Monday, March 19, 2:00-2:40 p.m.
Learning Mathematics through Digital Technologies…the Right Way!
Kirk Trigsted, Professor, University of Idaho

Tuesday, March 20, 11:00-11:30 a.m.
6 Ways to Use Polling Questions to Engage Students in Your Accounting Classroom
Dr. Wendy Tietz, Professor, Kent State University

Wednesday, March 28, 4:00-4:30 p.m.
WAKE UP! Engagement Strategies to Compete in an Attention Economy
Michael R. Solomon, Professor, Saint Joseph’s University

Monday, April 9, 12:00-12:30 p.m.
Dynamic Techniques for Teaching Structure and Agency in the Sociology Classroom
Jodie Lawston, Professor, California State University, San Marcos

Tuesday, April 10, 2:00-2:30 p.m.
Measuring Student Apprehension, Comprehension, and Engagement in the E-book Era
Dr. Sam Sommers, Professor, Tufts University & Dr. Lisa Shin, Professor, Tufts University

Thursday, April 12, 11:00-11:30 a.m.
Stories and Histories: Hooking Students with the Tale
Bill Brands, Professor, University of Texas at Austin

Metacognitive Learning Strategies for A&P Students (recording available)
Chasity O’Malley, Professor, Palm Beach State College

Thinking Critically from Day ONE of Class (recording available)
Dr. Lourdes Norman-McKay, Professor, Florida State College-Jacksonville

No More “But That’s the Answer the Computer Gave Me” (recording available)
Jim Hanson, Professor, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Yvonne Vannatta, Product Marketing Manager at Pearson recently sat down with Susan Riedel, author and Marquette University professor to talk about the challenges instructors face when teaching Electric Circuits and the best practices Susan uses to tackle them.

Yvonne – What is the biggest challenge instructors face when teaching Circuits?

Susan – Mastering the many different circuit analysis techniques presented in Electric Circuits requires most students to solve a lot of problems.  It is often hard to convince students that they cannot simply read through a worked example problem, or watch an instructor solve a problem at the board – they need to actively solve problems themselves in order to learn the circuit analysis techniques.

While I typically assign 10 – 12 problems each week for homework, the students would benefit from working at least twice that number of problems every week.  So I have to find ways to get students to solve lots more problems than I assign for homework.

Yvonne – What strategies do you use to engage students in more problem solving?

Susan – I use a combination of Learning Catalytics questions, pre-lab questions, and old exams to present and ask students to solve more problems.

Learning Catalytics

I use Learning Catalytics to pose questions to my students throughout my lectures.  They get a small amount of extra credit for attempting to answer the questions, even when they answer incorrectly.  I usually start the lecture with a Learning Catalytics question focused on the material we covered in the previous day’s lecture, as a way to review the material and remind them what we are working on.

Then throughout the lecture I pose Learning Catalytics questions that may ask them to complete a problem I started to solve for them on the board, find a way to verify that the problem’s solution is correct, or discover some interesting property of the circuit we are analyzing.

The students are solving additional problems, not just watching me solve them, and I am getting real-time feedback that tells me whether or not the topic I’m covering is being understood by the students.

About once every two weeks, I pick a lecture day and turn it into a group problem-solving challenge, again using Learning Catalytics.  The students work together in small self-selected teams to solve several circuit problems.

I wander around the classroom, look over their shoulders, answer questions they ask, and encourage them.  Even though I don’t present this as a competition, they like to compete and see how their team stacks up against the other teams in the class.

They are actively solving problems that are not assigned as homework, and I can observe what material they may be struggling with, so I can adjust my next lecture accordingly.

Pre-lab questions

The Electric Circuits class I teach has an embedded lab.  There are 11 labs during the 16 week semester.  Each lab requires students to complete a pre-lab assignment that they turn in to me for grading two days before the lab.  I return their graded pre-labs within 24 hours so they can correct any errors they made before building the circuits in the lab.

Every pre-lab has two parts – an analysis of one or more circuits, and MultiSim simulation of those same circuits to verify the analytical results.  So again, they are solving additional circuit problems that are not assigned for homework, then simulating those same circuits and eventually building the circuits and acquiring and analyzing data.

Old exams

Students take an in-class exam every 4 weeks.  I make all of my old exams available to them so they can solve the exam problems as a way to study for the upcoming exam.  I never provide my solutions, to encourage them to solve the problems themselves and not merely study problems and their solutions.

They can check their solutions during my office hours and during an evening Study Group I hold the night before the exam.  Again, they are willingly solving lots of additional circuit problems that are not formally assigned in order to prepare to take the exam.

Using the combination of Learning Catalytics, pre-lab assignments, and old exams, I usually get close to my goal of having students solve 20 – 25 circuit problems every week, even though I formally assign about half that number as homework.

Yvonne – What is the biggest challenge students face when taking Circuits?

Susan– Many students struggle with the initial step in solving a circuit – where do I start?  Consider that a simple circuit with a dc source and a few resistors must be described by six or eight independent equations derived from Ohm’s law and the Kirchhoff laws.

This often overwhelms a student seeing circuit analysis for the first time.  Most of my students would be discouraged by the prospect of entering six or eight equations into their calculator correctly to solve for the circuit’s voltages and currents.

So when students finally discover a tool like the node-voltage method, they realize that six or eight equations are not necessary to describe simple circuits.  But many students still need some guidance to use the general-purpose circuit analysis tools.

Yvonne – How do you prepare students to find that starting point?

Susan – To help students first learning to use the general-purpose circuit analysis tools like the node-voltage and mesh-current methods, I have always constructed a step-by-step procedure for them to follow.

The step-by-step procedure tells them what kinds of equations to write (KCL or KVL, for example), how many of these equations to write, where to write those equations in the circuit, and how to check their solutions to those equations by balancing the power in the circuit.

We have now formalized these step-by-step procedures in the 11th Edition of Electric Circuits, where they are called “Analysis Methods.”  The Analysis Methods give students the confidence they need to solve circuit problems because they know how to start the problem and what procedure to follow to reach a solution.

Initially students rely heavily on the Analysis Methods but they eventually need to follow a step-by-step procedure less often, often preferring to take a more intuitive approach.

For most students, following an Analysis Method initially allows them to grasp the circuit analysis concepts faster than students who are not given a step-by-step procedure to follow.  Students using Analysis Methods spend less time trying to decide how to solve a problem because they follow a set of steps.  They finish their assignments faster and endure much less frustration along the way.

Yvonne – What advice would you give to instructors new to teaching Circuits?

Susan – There are so many resources available to instructors teaching Circuits, and a lot of thought and hard work have gone into the design and implementation of these resources.  Instructors should take advantage of as many resources as time allows.

Learning Catalytics is a terrific resource for active learning in the classroom, supplying real-time feedback to instructors that enables them to identify material their students are struggling with.

Mastering Engineering has tutorials that guide students through important material using intelligent feedback to assist their learning, video solutions for many different problems, automated grading for assigned homework, and many other useful features.

Software simulators allow students to study a circuit with changing component values, plot circuit variables of interest, and use many different types of analysis including dc, transient, and ac steady-state. Many students benefit from the virtual laboratory experience that a simulator provides, even if an actual laboratory experience is not available to them.

The more resources an instructor can bring to bear on the Circuits material, the more likely it is that the instructor will align with the various learning styles of all students in the classroom, leading to the success of every student.

Hear directly from Professor Riedel on how you can engage more students in team-based problem solving our webinar: Using Learning Catalytics Inside and Outside the Circuits Classroom.