Developing Students as Higher-Order Thinkers: Analyzing Student Performance Against Levels of Cognitive Demand in a Material Science Course

Today’s increasingly complex engineering workplace demands skill in evaluation, reasoning and critical thinking; however, engineering curricula often test lower-order learning at the expense of higher-order reasoning. This paper analyzes the level of cognitive demand in a course on Material Science in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Science at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. This is done by applying Biggs’ SOLO taxonomy to classify test and exam questions in the course and then analyzing student performance against this taxonomy of higher- and lower-order learning. The results demonstrate that many students battle with questions that require extended abstract reasoning (argument, evaluation, hypothesizing and generalization). Similarly, relational thinking (through comparison, contrast, application and so on) proves to be a significant problem for weaker students. The paper recommends that engineering lecturers build higher-order thinking into course outcomes, teaching and assessment and that engineering qualifications work systematically towards developing students as higher-order thinkers.