Abstract:
Critical thinking has been identified as a very important skill by
employers for the employment of graduates. A need exists to
develop and assess critical thinking skills in tertiary institutions as
employers have noted a gap in these skills among graduates. This
skill can be developed, over time, by collaborative learning and
given that student assessment, to a large extent, drives student
learning this study proposed a revised assessment format: the
‘partial pre-release’ (PPR) assessment to attempt to cultivate critical
thinking skills through collaboration. The PPR provided a pre-released case study where students had the opportunity to
collaborate with peers before the assessment day. New
information presented to students on the assessment day required
increased depth in answering to showcase the cultivation of
critical thinking skills. Quantitative data were collected over a
period of two years using a survey. The PPR assessment format
was found to show a statistically significant relationship between
collaboration and the level of perceived depth when answering
the required task. From these results, the study acknowledges the
role that collaborative learning can play in cultivating a critical
thinking mindset when an appropriate assessment tool is used.
