Creating Student Projects that Embed Critical Thinking and Promote Creativity
Presentation Type
Poster
Location
University Student Center Ballrooms 1 & 2
Description
Tired of your students’ groans about reading, let alone reading critically? Come and see how critical reading can lead to verifying, analysis, critiquing, and creating! In this poster presentation, the author will share a project that implemented critical thinking at high order levels according to Bloom's Taxonomy and promoted student creativity and choice. This project required students to critically read articles that were subsequently used as a basis for analysis and creation. Students had to analyze several different water bottles based on the content principles within the two articles. After the analysis, students had to critique their favorites based on their observations of applied techniques to support their decisions. The next step was for the students to design a beverage bottle label applying the content principles and write a description of label as to why and how it would appeal to their target audience. Therefore, the project became more meaningful and motivated the students to not just passively read something but apply the content principles to a new original creation. According to research, student empowerment (Spencer, 2019) leads to more comprehensive acquisition of the knowledge. In addition, in Rao's 2014 article, he emphasizes the need to provide students a more learner centric methodology, and in the Keller and Deimann 2018 chapter of Motivation, Volition, and Performance, they point out the need for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation which increases student volition and performance. By creating projects that go beyond the identification and comprehension of the content reading, critical thinking and reading skills become more vivid and transparent to the students thereby, encouraging them to transfer skills and content in current and future situations.
Creating Student Projects that Embed Critical Thinking and Promote Creativity
University Student Center Ballrooms 1 & 2
