Standardized Critical Thinking Scores Improve from Freshmen to Senior in an Exercise Science Program

Institutional variability in undergraduate exercise science education may be greater than biology or chemistry programs due to the minimal requirement of national standardized examinations for program accreditation. Yet, programmatic discipline skills and outcomes, such as critical thinking, may be very similar across these disciplines. Additionally, evidence suggests that academic educators and employers agree that critical thinking is an important skill needed in both college and the workplace. Moreover, there is agreement that critical thinking is often more highly regarded by employers than mastery of discipline‐specific content. However, conclusive evidence that critical thinking outcomes are being sufficiently met in higher education remains unclear. The lack of conclusive evidence is unacceptable when critical thinking outcomes are commonplace at the university, college, department, and programmatic levels. Further, limited evidence exists regarding the acquisition of adequate skills related to critical thinking in exercise science education. PURPOSE The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate critical thinking in an exercise science program following an explicit critical thinking objective/outcome based intervention. METHODS Critical thinking scores were obtained using the Health Science Reasoning Test (HSRT), a valid and reliable standardized assessment, which is commonly used in undergraduate and graduate health science programs. Exercise science students (N= 121; 59% female) completed the HSRT as first semester freshmen and in their last didactic semester as seniors. Following pre‐testing, exercise science students completed a curriculum with a tiered critical thinking outcome. Descriptive statistics were calculated as MEAN±SD and a t‐test was performed to determine differences in critical thinking HSRT scores. RESULTS Freshmen exercise science HSRT percentile scores were 57.8±25 and improved to 74.2±18 by Senior year ( P < 0.05). Similarly, the absolute HSRT critical thinking score was 2.5±3.4 higher following the completion of an exercise science program ( P < 0.05). Categorical breakdowns of critical thinking skill scores revealed the greatest degree of observed improvement Freshmen to Senior was in inductive and deductive reasoning (mean difference = 0.93±1.5 and 0.92±2.0, respectively; P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Students in an exercise science program at a 4‐year liberal arts university demonstrate a significant increase in critical thinking scores. Using a standardized critical thinking assessment tool may be valuable for standardization of program or university outcomes. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .