Assessing critical thinking and the differences among engineering students

Abstract

Engineering education plays an important role towards the development of world. Engineering is understood as a professional discipline, therefore, engineering education requires more development regarding upcoming challenges. Modern developments in technology as well as in workplace require engineers to be equipped with critical thinking skills such as problem solving and decision making. Currently, critical thinking is one of the important skill discussed in engineering education. This study has discussed critical thinking level and differences among engineering programs electrical, mechanical and civil. Furthermore, 315 final year engineering students of three engineering programs electrical, civil and mechanical voluntarily participated in this research. The quantitative survey method was used in this study. The paper-pencil version of critical thinking questionnaires were distributed to all participants. Moreover, mean and standard deviation were analyzed to determine students’ critical thinking level. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique was used to determine the critical thinking differences among engineering programs. Findings revealed that the critical thinking of civil engineering program differs from mechanical and electrical engineering programs. Furthermore, regarding electrical and mechanical programs, there was no any critical thinking difference found. This shows that all three engineering students from mechanical, electrical and civil programs possess different critical thinking level. In conclusion, this discusses that civil engineering students own different cognitive level than electrical and mechanical students. Engineering institutes need to focus on critical thinking based on programs so that better learning outcomes could be achieved. As well, engineers prepare themselves for future challenges in jobs and workplaces. Finally, change in technology rapidly happens, curricula are developed time to time, learners should be trained according to their programs and courses they study.