A systematic review of the impact on students and teachers of the use of ICT for assessment of creative and critical thinking skills

This systematic review using the EPPI protocol reported on the impact of formative or summative assessment of critical thinking using ICT.

The reviewers identified 32 studies relevant to their focus and selected 12 that were mainly evaluations of teaching situations for an in-depth review.

Findings from these studies that were held to provide dependable evidence included:

• Computer-based concept-mapping can be used to produce summative assessment of critical and creative thinking.
• ICT can help teachers by storing and recording information about students’ developing understanding of new material.
• ICT can help teachers by taking over some of the assessing and giving feedback to students, so that teachers can focus on supporting learning.
• Assessment can be ICT-led so that feedback from the computer, during the use of test material, improves student performance in later use of the same test material.
• Problems with meaning – needs to be much clearer for the intended audience.

The reviewers indicated that the following additional findings from other studies should be treated cautiously. As well as reinforcing the earlier findings, they found some evidence that students' use of ICT could:

• Aid their understanding
• Be used to present them with real-life problems (although this might be questioned when ICT is largely virtual in nature)
• Provide concrete representations of abstract problems
• Act as an external memory
• Motivate them to undertake assessment tasks
• Disadvantage girls (however, this needs to be explored further)

This review may be of interest to teacher educators concerned about the assessment of higher-order thinking skills.

Keywords

ICT, critical thinking, thinking skills, creativity, assessment

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BEI Keywords

Computer Uses in Education, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Formative Evaluation, Information Technology, Summative Evaluation, Thinking Skills

Article published to :

Topic Area

Assessment

QTS Standards

2002: Professional values and practice (S1), Q17 Know how to use skills in literacy, numeracy and ICT to support their teaching, S2.5 Use ICT effectively, both in teaching and to support wider role

Type of Resource

EPPI Reviews, Research Reviews

Education

All Key Stages and Age Ranges, ICT

Authors :

Wynne Harlen and Ruth Deakin Crick

Other Contributor :

Paul Black, Patricia Broadfoot, Richart Daugherty, John Gardener, Mary James, Gordon Stobart and Dylan Wiliams

Source :

http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=109&language=en-US

Publisher :

EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education

Article Id :

Date Posted: