Assessing the Critical Thinking and Deep Analysis in Medical Education Among Instructional Practices

The purpose of this study was to examine the application of faculty to stimulate the critical thinking and deep analysis of their students through instructional practice including lecture design, assessment structure, and assignment instructions.

Faculty from multiple different health colleges at Saudi Arabia were asked to respond to survey items about the activities they use in their classrooms with regards to designing lectures, assessment structures, and instructional assignments. A correlation analysis was performed to determine if the level of applied critical thinking and deep analysis that is stimulated by faculty members were statistically related between designing lectures, assessment structure, and instructional assignments. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also performed to determine if there were significant differences based on the demographic characteristics of the participants and level of applied critical thinking and deep analysis.

A correlational analysis revealed that the mean score for designing lectures was 67.276, following by a mean score of 65.233 for instructional assignment and 64.688 for assessment structure. The result of the ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference in the perceptions of the participants between designing lectures, assessment structure, and instructional assignment (p<0.05).

The participants applied critical thinking and deep analysis when they design their lectures more than assessments and instructional assignments. They had the flexibility to stimulate critical thinking during the lecture activities. In contrast, this flexibility was limited when they were structuring the assessment as they had instructions to consider and were required to provide a rubric with unified key answer which is a mandatory requirement from the assessment department. This is due to the nature of high level of critical thinking answers that lead to high subjectivity in student responses.