Measuring Students’ Critical Thinking in Online Environment: Methodology, Conceptual Framework and Tasks Typology

Abstract

Today critical thinking is one of the key competencies of the modern world. The abundance and availability of various information ( in particular due to the spread of electronic devices and the Internet) suggest that people, regardless of age, need to be able to effectively navigate and evaluate information, draw their own conclusions and use arguments when making decisions. Research of critical thinking in terms of the possibilities of its evaluation and development began more than 60 years ago and has a wide and heterogeneous field of theoretical approaches. In this article, we explore the theoretical possibility of measuring the complex latent construct “critical thinking in an online environment” using the Evidence- Centered Design (ECD) methodology. It allows one to build a chain of arguments that substantiate the conclusion about the level of critical thinking development in the respondent and thereby ensure the fairness of the assessment process. The measurement goes from theoretical assumptions about the nature of the construct to the search for empirical evidence - observable actions in the testing process, allowing to draw reasonable conclusions about the respondents. The result of the work is a theoretical framework for assessing critical thinking in an online environment for university students and its operationalization through the relevant observed behavior of the target audience, which allows obtaining valid data on the severity of critical thinking. This is the first step to create an instrument in Russian with a confirmed psychometric quality. The key feature of the tool is that the student does not work in a simulated environment where information sources are selected by developers, but in an open online environment, therefore, he can use any available materials to solve the task.