Poster: Education & outreach

Abs # 927: Creativity: An Integral Part of Critical Thinking

Presenter:	Schaffer, Karen L, kls@mail.nwmissouri.edu
Authors	Schaffer, Karen L (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Northwest Missouri State University

Teaching based upon critical thinking incorporates both content mastery and thought processes that enable students to analyze, process and examine concepts and assumptions. Creativity is an inseparable part of critical thought in that it demands a person to construct, assess and judge the product that is created. A final exam project that incorporated creativity in the critical thinking process was devised to assess students’ knowledge of botanical structure and/or processes. Each student in my General Botany class, three weeks prior to the final exam, was given a paper bag that contained either sticks of clay, sugar cubes, various types of pasta, marshmallows, or assorted sizes of Popsicle sticks. The student was then instructed to use all of their materials to build some botanical structure or to illustrate a process that had been addressed during the semester. The students also had the option of using additional construction materials if they wished. Each student had to: 1) deliberate and choose a structure or process (DNA molecule, pine leaf cross section, mitosis, transcription) to illustrate 2) contemplate how to build such a structure with the given materials 3) creatively construct the object so that it was scientifically correct and 4) critically assess if the accuracy and significance of the constructed object would be apparent (evident) to the instructor. The project was enormously successful based upon quantitative assessment (via rubric), student evaluations, and the demonstration of students’ critical and creative thought processes evident in the quality of the constructed objects.