Assess students' reasoning skills and disposition toward learning
and thinking.
Educational institutions around the world use IA's reasoning assessment
tools to gather data on students' reasoning skills and their disposition
to use those skills. Teaching students to be both willing and able
to think demands exercising those skills and nurturing the motivation
to use those skills in problem solving, learning, and decision making.
IA offers assessment three kinds of reasoning assessment tools:
critical thinking
skills tests of differing degrees of difficulty,
learning motivation
and thinking disposition measures, and holistic
rating forms and rubrics. Each type is supported
by extensive research. Our safe, secure, any time
any where on-line E-testing
system enables you to manage test-takers, assign tests, set testing
periods, and download your test data. Our premier test scanning,
scoring, and data analysis service, CapScore™,
gives you individual and group results quickly and conveniently.
Contact
IA about your student learning outcomes assessment
project and order specimen kits for the assessment instruments you
need.
Evaluate
the effectiveness of programs, courses, and instructional strategies.
IA supports your program and course evaluation objectives in
three ways. We assist with the design of the program evaluation
strategy and the development of the customized
instrumentation for data gathering. And, we support
the leadership efforts of faculty and administrators by suggesting
productive new approaches to important institutional processes.
Our senior consultants
are experienced educational leaders, faculty development specialists,
and program evaluation experts. Visit our webpage on teaching tips
for more ideas and to download the
teaching for thinking student course evaluation form.
Prepare
for institutional or professional program accreditation.
Regional accrediting agencies seek information about the achievement
of the student learning outcomes that colleges and universities
espouse in their program descriptions, such as the development of
students' thinking skills. Professional accreditation in fields
like accounting, business, engineering, the health professions,
nursing, and the social and health care services often explicitly
ask for data about the development of students' critical thinking,
reasoning, and professional judgment. IA has assisted scores of
institutions of higher education and professional programs with
their preparations for accreditation. Our consultants
present workshops on outcomes assessment and work with academic
leaders on planning data gathering strategies. IA assists with the
design of the instrumentation,
scoring, and data analysis.
Respond
to "high stakes" mandates, such as performance funding.
IA has worked with programs in specific professional fields and
with many institutions in specific states in response to high stakes
mandates requiring learning outcomes assessment and norm group comparisons.
Performance funding processes, for example, often require that the
assessment results from data gathered at a given institution be
compared to norms developed from an appropriately representative
set of other similar institutions. Professional accreditation standards
in some fields ask for data that indicates student success in achieving
specific learning objectives. IA services address these mandates
in two ways. Using our established reasoning assessment tools, like
the CCTST,
TER,
CCTDI,
etc. you can gather objective data concerning students' critical
thinking skills and dispositions. Relevant norm group comparisons
can then be made. Second, IA's experienced faculty development consultants
can assist with workshops
and presentations that focus on strategies for being
more effective in teaching for and about thinking.
Find
out what students or alumni think about your programs and services.
Educators
at every level know that is one thing to make decisions based on
what students or alumni "should" believe and quite another
to base those plans and decisions on what they do think. Whether
the issue is new program development, service quality assessment,
or market analysis and fundraising, decision-makers need good data.
IA instrument development specialists can assist with the design
of data gathering tools. Our e-testing and data analysis
services can then provide you and your colleagues with the information
that has been gathered. Contact IA to discuss your student and alumni
opinion survey needs.
Assemble
objective information for admissions and advising purposes.
Success
is often difficult to predict because of the many factors, circumstances,
and unexpected events that affect a given individual's path through
life. But educators would generally agree that students with stronger
reasoning skills and the positive disposition to engage those skills
are more likely to be successful learners. This belief is not surprising,
considering some of the correlations
between critical thinking other measures. Many professional school
admissions directors now include CCTST
, CCTDI,
HSRT,
TER
and/or CM3
data within the larger body of information that can be used in their
decision-making processes. Faculty advisors find it helpful when
talking with students to have objective information, such as a student's
test scores, ready to hand. Good information makes for better decisions
and sounder advice.
Find
an experienced presenter for a faculty development program.
Since 1992 IA's experienced
senior consultants have made presentations, lead
workshops, and been keynote speakers at colleges, universities,
and professional association meetings.
Click here to see review a list of some
of the places they have visited. Click
here to see what people say in response. Consulting
visits are individually negotiated between the consultant and the
institution. This way our consultants are better able to address
your specific needs and objectives. The typical faculty development
visit includes conversations with key academic leaders, both faculty
and administrative, as well as one or more substantial workshops
that both model and discuss effective strategies to teach for and
about thinking. Because of demand, IA recommends scheduling a consulting
visit several months, if not a year in advance.
Learn
more about strategies to teach for and about thinking.
Start
by downloading two reports: "Critical
Thinking - What It Is and Why It Counts," written
primarily for students, takes a Socratic approach in unfolding the
concept of critical thinking and exploring its significance. "The
Delphi Report - Executive Summary," written
for educators, is a consensus description of core critical thinking
skills, with examples of the kinds of activities that typically
require those skills, and consensus recommendations for critical
thinking instruction and assessment. There are many ways good teachers
engage students in the exercise of their thinking skills and to
encourage them in their motivation to use those skills in learning.
And there are other things that poor teachers do that stifle thinking.
This web site offers two additional sources for specifics. One is
in the articles
written by our expert presenters, based on their research and teaching
experience, on ways to externalize students' critical thinking and
things to remember when writing effective examinations. The second
is to visit our Teaching
Tips page, which offers a selection of ideas and
examples.
Get
help with a research project.
Research
on teaching and learning, on institutional effectiveness, on program
quality, or on the impact of curricular changes can get very challenging.
If you are a faculty member, institutional research office professional,
or doctoral student seeking some technical assistance with the project
design or with questions about which statistical analyses to consider,
we suggest you might want contact one of our senior researchers
by phone or e-mail, just to talk about your research project or
dissertation. Click
here for contact information.. We who formed IA over
twenty years ago are university teachers, scholars, and administrators.
Learn more
about why by clicking here.
Evaluate
reasoning ability and mental motivation.
IA's
tests of reasoning skills provide objective data about a job applicant's
or employee's reasoning skills in analysis, inference, evaluation,
deduction, and induction. These data are valuable, in conjunction
with other relevant information, in the evaluation of candidates
for employment and promotion. That is, unless an organization would
prefer to hire or promote persons with lesser reasoning skills.
Learn more about IA's
reasoning skills tests.
Some
job applicants and employees are able to think but not willing to
put out the effort. Others profess the desire to use their thinking
skills or assert great confidence in their own thinking, but simply
lack the mental horsepower they profess or desire to have. IA's reasoning
assessment tools address both the desire and the ability to engage
in good reasoning. You can evaluate the inclination toward using one's
thinking skills -- such as they may or may not bee -- independently
of the evaluation of those skills themselves. Learn
more about IA's reasoning motivation and disposition measures.
Find
out what clients and customers think.
It is one thing to speculate about what your clients and customers
think about your products and services, it is another to know. Operational
goals and business plans based on good information are better than
goals and plans based on anecdotes and speculation. IA's expert
consultants will work with you on every aspect step in the process
of gathering that vital information. Our experienced instrument
designers work with your leadership team to develop tools that are
customized to your specific business needs. Contact IA about our
custom too design, data gathering, and data analysis support services.
Learn more about
how IA can custom design the tools to address your information needs.
Assessing
professional judgment in new managers.
Novice managers and entry level executives must quickly develop
the professional judgment that they will need to be successful in
their new positions. If their supervisors are smart, they will be
watching the development of these newly hired or newly promoted
individuals in order to give them pointers on how to be more effective.
The Professional Judgment
Rating Form was created to assist with exactly this
process, the process of developing the professional judgment of
novice and entry level personnel. This tool can be used by the supervisor,
by the persons themselves, and by their peers to supply valuable
feedback - the kind of helpful information that can make the difference
between a good start and a poor start in a new position.
Leadership
and building effective thinking teams.
Leaders
who surround themselves with effective thinking teams are consistently
going to make better decisions because the process of thinking problems
through with a group of smart and informed people will not only
assist in avoiding sub-optimal choices but is far more likely to
reveal new options and a broader range of consequences than one
person is likely to imagine on their own. Our team's latest research
on decision-making and problem solving shows that these processes
combine analytical reasoning and heuristic thinking. These research
findings, along with the practical wisdom that comes from years
of executive leadership experience and professional practice, include
specific strategies for building, sustaining, and using the thinking-team
approach to leadership decision-making. When it comes to thinking
teams, the whole is never equal to the sum of its parts. Contact
IA about on-site consulting in leadership development.
Business professionals, download "The
Case of the HR Jump-start" which was used in
a training workshop for HR directors of major corporations in Chicago
in 2002.
Academics: Visit our academic leadership "case
studies" webpage for more information.
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