Assessment of critical thinking in physics labs: concurrent validity

Abstract

Despite the significant amount of time undergraduate students spend in introductory physics labs, there is little consensus on instructional goals and accepted diagnostic assessments for these labs. In response to these issues, we have developed the Physics Lab Inventory of Critical thinking (PLIC) to assess students' proficiency with critical thinking in a physics lab context. Specifically, the PLIC aims to evaluate students' skills in making sense of data, variability, models, and experimental methods and to assess the effectiveness of lab courses at developing these skills. Here, we discuss the statistical and expert validation of this instrument using 2681 valid student responses collected from 12 institutions during the 2017-2018 academic year. As a part of our validation, we address the impact of lab design on student performance on the instrument.

Comparing study features is easy but identifying next steps is hard: Evaluating critical thinking through the Biology Lab Inventory of Critical Thinking in Ecology

“…This instrument would complement existing critical thinking assessments (Table 1 ) and provide a novel way to assess undergraduate student critical thinking in courses that include ecology. Using frameworks from Vision and Change (AAAS, 2011 ) and the Advancing Competencies in Experimentation–Biology (ACE Bio) Network (Pelaez et al, 2018 ), and building from a related instrument in physics, the Physics Lab Inventory of Critical Thinking (PLIC; Quinn et al, 2018 ; Walsh et al, 2018 ; Walsh et al, 2019 ), we created experimental scenarios and questions intended to probe students' critical thinking skills. The scenarios and questions were designed to assess a range of students from multiple institutions and were research‐validated following standard procedures, including comparing open‐ and closed‐response versions, interviewing students, administering the assessments in multiple institutional contexts, and getting feedback from experts (Adams & Wieman, 2011 ).…”