Using the Critical Incident Questionnaire in teaching STEM

Author and presenter

• Krzysztof Bolejko, School of Natural Sciences, CoSE

Abstract

Education that makes a difference is transformational and makes an impact. It starts with students and enables them to achieve their potential: with practices based on reflection playing a central role in transformational education (Gibbs, 1988). One way of navigating through a rapidly evolving environment is to incorporate practices that are based on reflection and dialogue. The Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) developed by Stephen Brookfield (Brookfield, 1998) has already proved to be a successful tool in tertiary education (Samuel & Conceição, 2022). The CIQ tool is a set of five questions that prompt students to reflect on their learning throughout a given week. The CIQs are handed out at the end of a week and are discussed at the first lecture in the following week (Brookfield, 2017). This practice assists in building rapport with students and increases their engagement (Jacobs, 2015). In this Lightning Presentation, I will discuss my own experience in using the CIQ tool in teaching an engineering unit. I will discuss how the CIQ allowed students to reflect on their learning and how their voice assisted in shaping my teaching. I will also present some general, high-level results. Another benefit of the CIQ is its swift (compared to eVALUate) and anonymous nature. By being able to read students feedback/reflection on a weekly basis I was able to empathise more effectivity and identity some of the barriers that they faced. During this Lightning Presentation, I will also discuss ethics requirements and provide some advice on how CIQ could be implemented in teaching other units.

References

Brookfield, S. (1998). Critically reflective practice. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 18(4), 197–205. https://doi.org/10.1002/chp.1340180402 

Brookfield, S. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Educational Unit, Oxford Polytechnic; Also: University of Edinburgh. (2020, November 11). Gibbs reflective cycle. https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle Also: https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle

Jacobs, M. A. (2015). By their pupils they’ll be taught: Using critical incident questionnaire as feedback. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, 21, 9-22.

Samuel, A., & Conceição, S. C. O. (2022). Using the Critical Incident Questionnaire as a formative evaluation tool to inform online course design: A qualitative study. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v23i2.5745