Appendix 12: General Education Exam, Spring 2006
Critical Thinking General Education Exam

Creation of the Examination

This exam was constructed by the General Education Task Force upon consultation with faculty members from a variety of departments (as appropriate depending on the question involved) and with collaboration from both the Assessment Committee and members from the WASC group working on educational effectiveness indicators. After the task force had a draft of the exam, it was critiqued by the two other committees and then redrafted. Two or three cycles of that process were completed before the exam was ready to be administered to students.

Description of the Examination

The exam consists of four distinct questions and is designed to be administered during an hour time period so that it can be given during a class time if need be. The first question is a critical reading/thinking question involving a simple and straightforward reading passage followed by seven questions that follow Bloom’s taxonomy (with 2 questions at the lowest level).

The second question is a critical thinking question focused on the logical skill of “if—then” thinking. The question presents several groups interested in the same issue and details the exact nature of their interest; there then follow 10 statements on the issue. Students are asked to determine (from multiple choices provided) which interest group most likely said each statement.

The third question provides a hypothetical description of someone’s life and asks the student to determine the likely causes of the person’s unhappiness. The question is designed to assess how holistically students think about real-life situations.

The final question on the exam asks students to explain behaviors in two situations that deal with issues of discrimination.

Administration of the Examination

The exam will be administered through capstone courses in majors. We expect, however, to be able to capture a far larger number of students because we will be able to communicate to the faculty involved at the beginning of the semester. We therefore anticipate that a much larger number of faculty members will be able to make time for us to administer the exam.

Arrangements for Grading the Examination

We plan to spend some time during the summer preparing rubrics and grading this final general education assessment exam and analyzing results.

Future Adjustments to the Examination

We assume that exam results will point us to places where the exam needs to be improved as well as to places where we need to work more effectively in our general education curriculum.