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Overview
The CAT Instrument is a unique tool designed
to assess and promote the improvement of critical thinking and
real-world problem solving skills. The instrument is the
product of extensive development, testing, and refinement with a
broad range of institutions, faculty, and students across the
country. The National Science Foundation has provided support
for many of these activities.
The CAT Instrument is designed to assess a
broad range of skills that faculty across the country feel are
important components of critical thinking and real world problem
solving. The test was designed to be interesting and
engaging for students. All of the questions are derived from
real world situations. Most of the questions require
short answer essay responses and a detailed scoring guide helps
insure good scoring reliability.
The CAT Instrument is scored by the
institution's own faculty using the detailed scoring guide.
Training is provided to prepare institutions for this activity.
During the scoring process faculty are able to see their students'
weaknesses and understand areas that need improvement. This
instrument is designed to complement quality improvement efforts.
Partial support for this work was provided
by the National Science Foundation’s CCLI Program under grant 0404911 and grant
0717654.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions
or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
