Challenges of Distance Teaching Masters in International Relations

• Project Team: William Brown
• Subject Discipline: Social Sciences and Global Studies
• Theme: Equality, diversity and inclusionOnline and blended tuition
• Project Aim: Enables more students to achieve their study goalsImproves and enhance the learning experience of studentsPromotes equality diversity and inclusion including reduction of degree awarding gap
• Status: Complete
• Date: February 2020 to May 2020

In the age of digital information and high levels of technology in academic life, critical thinking skills are not just considered as an element of academic literacy; they have been interpreted in terms of the ability to use Microsoft Office and reference managing software effectively when undergoing academic tasks (Julia and Isrokatun, 2019) further raising the expectations on students of wide-ranging critical thinking skills performance in their academic journey that can also impact on academic conduct and plagiarism (Wentworth and Whitmarsh, 2017).One of the greatest academic challenges faced by higher education students is the ability to think critically, approach their learning with an evaluative stance, and understand the need for evidence-based argument in their academic writing. This is not a new challenge; simply defining what critical thinking skills are has led to complex models that weave in metacognition and disposition as influencing factors (Bensley & Murtagh, 2011), include multiple supplementary skills that involve problem-solving, calculation of possible outcomes and decision-making (Halpern, 2014), and a recognition that these are largely domain-specific (Lilienfeld et al, 2020) despite the expectation that students can transfer these skills across subjects and from academic life to real life (Halpern and Sternberg, 2020).

Students’ achievements in higher education are contingent on meeting learning outcomes on assignments that include the need to think critically and evaluate evidence. Yet teaching critical thinking skills can be problematic, with decisions to be made about whether interventions outside module content are more successful than those embedded within activities and readings. Research where different interventions have been used with students, comparing embedded with discrete, and with no interventions as a control, has found that discrete tasks are more effective than those hidden within other tasks and activities (Bensley et al, 2010). In the era of the soundbite, where news and information are often delivered in ways that misrepresent or diminish the larger story behind the soundbite, there are questions around how much students actually read any of their provided study literature at all, whether online or by textbook (Sternberg & Halperin, 2020). Developing a discrete intervention that provides students with an audio or video stimulus that can then be interrogated critically as an activity within an online tutorial resonates with findings that critical thinking is an explicit skill that needs to be demonstrated as such (Bensley et al, 2010), and subsequently aligned to course materials to model its application to students’ learning. The intention will be that students will begin to grasp the importance of using evidence from different sources, be more sceptical about research findings, and consider limitations as well as benefits within the new knowledge they are gaining.

Tutors find it difficult to develop critical evaluation skills in psychology students. Often it is focused on research studies and framed as simplistic methodological criticisms around sample size and validity. Students often ask for examples of assignments that include ‘good’ critical evaluation and argument, which are not something that tutors can provide. This lack of clarity in tutors and students, relating to what critical thinking and evaluation actually is, has led to development in the US of guidance and examples of tasks that are designed to develop critical thinking skills for use by teachers of psychology (e.g. Wentworth and Whitmarsh, 2017). The intention of this project is to similarly develop an intervention, based on a podcast or video, with accompanying teaching materials that will help tutors support their students in the development of these skills.

These materials will be trialled in the level 1 psychology module DE100, where students are progressively moved from largely descriptive compare and contrast activities (assessed in TMA02) to evaluative thinking using evidence from the module textbook and online activities (TMA03). It is planned that the intervention will be used between these two assignments, around week 12, before students fully embark on the evaluative essay that forms TMA03.

The research questions for this study are:

1. Can students gain critical thinking and writing skills, including the ability to critically evaluate, through intervention using provided materials in online tutorials?
2. Do tutors benefit from the provision of materials to teach critical thinking skills to their undergraduate level 1 students?