International Higher Education Teacher Award ^2024/25

CRITICARE aims at training students in critical thinking and deep learning of given topics. It combines several evidence-based approaches into a coherent and easy-to-implement workflow to reach this goal (Bloom’s taxonomy, constructive alignment, peer review, growth mindset), which is the novelty. Learning activities are designed to gradually train more and more complex thinking skills, from simple remembering to analyzing, drawing connection between ideas, critically thinking and creating new content. Students are empowered by the structure of the course, which largely relies on their active learning: classes build on each other, and build on the work of students. Their progress is monitored along the way both by the teachers, by themselves and by peers, which further improves the learning of students. The activities range from problem solving of case studies or organized debates to the design and execution of a research experiment. Care is another important aspect, where the growth mindset is used to shift the efforts of the teacher from sorting students as “good” or “bad” to focus instead on the progress of students, and the implementation and adjustment of teaching strategies to serve student growth. The result is high satisfaction of students and an increased sense of agency and trust in their thinking abilities, high performance both evaluated within the course and by external feedback.

Methodology

The CRITICARE method relies on 4 pillars: 1. Training critical thinking using active learning Learning is more than just remembering facts and explaining them to the teacher. CRITICARE includes more complex skills than just that, based the well-accepted Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). In this framework, learning entails 6 levels (from the simplest to the most complex task; see below and Document 1 for more details). CRITICARE uses the principle of constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2011), which means we need to design learning activities to train each of these 6 levels, and final assignments to evaluate the students in these 6 levels. Here is an example of teaching activities for each level: a) Recall facts and basic concepts: quizzes filled up individually and results discussed in the group b) Explain ideas or concepts: students pick a concept in a pool of papers and explain it to a classmate (pair work) or to the whole class; basic concepts available online and discussed between students, unresolved discussions brought by the teacher to solve in the classroom (flipped classroom) c) Use information in new situations: case study (students work in pairs) of simple research results involving the direct application of one concept at a time learned in a) and b); execution of a practical lab project d) Draw connections among ideas: more complex case studies involving a broader range of concepts learned in a) and b), directed task to ponder and connect the different results and concepts together e) Justify a stand or decision (critical thinking): organized debate on one statement based on case studies (or other resources found by students); ponder conclusions and hypotheses in a written essay f) Produce new or original work; write a well-supported essay; design a lab project All these 6 levels, even the simplest ones, imply active engagement of the students (students explaining, drawing connections, analyzing, justifying a decision…) and thus training them require active learning. Active learning here is not just a trick to engage student, it is a necessity. In CRITICARE, the semester typically starts from the first levels (basic knowledge) and the course activities progressively move towards higher levels (such as practicing critical thinking) later in the semester. 2. Formative, self and peer-assessment Formative assessment (feedback on an assignment which is not graded), self-assessment (students assessing their own progress) and peer-assessment (students evaluating each other) has been shown to impact positively student performance (Biggs & Tang, 2011). To support students in this, they are given and explained at the beginning of the course the intended learning outcomes and the principles of Bloom’s taxonomy (see Document 1), so that they know what is expected from them and have a tool to measure their own progress and know where to direct their efforts. Assignments are given during the semester and evaluated (formative assessment) in the light of their achievements of each of the skills of Bloom’s learning. Finally, students are guided by the teacher to evaluate anonymously the work of other students according to the learning outcomes, following the Calibrated Peer Review concept ( http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/Overview ). This not only helps students understand better what is expected from them when they must evaluate a work, but it also trains their critical thinking. 3. Skill implementation into the design and execution of a research-scale experiment At the end of the semester, students are asked to design and execute a research-scale lab project. This requires defining a hypothesis to test, evaluate the potential risks and drawbacks, decide on compromise between what they can test and the limited amount of material provided (lab supplies etc). The project is team based, so they have to agree with each other, which trains their communication skills. The students are then asked to write an article-like reports containing their major findings and their critical discussion of what these results mean for the tested hypothesis. This process combines in one activity all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. 4. Care: implementing the growth mindset and Theory Y An important aspect of the CRITICARE method is how we handle student’s progress. The growth mindset, i.e. the belief that any student can grow their skills with the proper strategy, has been shown to positively impact student performance (Yeagers et al., 2019), while the opposite, the fixed mindset (“there are good/smart students and bad/untalented ones”) hinders it. This mindset impacts how students respond to making mistakes, either by seeing that as an opportunity to learn (growth mindset), or as mistakes proving students are stupid (fixed mindset). This is a radical shift in how we approach education, and simple things can be done for that: - Shifting our own mindset as a teacher from “what students are” (good or bad) to “what we can do” to foster their growth; many of us have been raised with a fixed mindset. To do so, a few articles can be read (e.g., Yeagers et al., 2019) - Explaining the growth mindset to students - Praising efforts and learning strategies rather than qualities such as smart/good… Also, CRITICARE uses the Theory Y of motivation: it assumes that students do their best in general, and they get motivated if the task engages them. The traditional way to keep students motivated is usually the opposite (Theory X), relying on direct rewards, penalties and close supervision by the teacher. The theory Y promotes internal motivation, empowerment, critical thinking and decision making of students (Biggs & Tang, 2011). Theory Y in action means little to no repressive measures such as threatening of grading an activity so that the students will do it or giving a cookie (literal or not). Instead, it means designing activities that are engaging, giving responsibility to the students for the progress of the course program (e.g., building a following class on an assignment given to the students). And first and foremost, it is about acquiring the belief, as a teacher, that yes, students will do their best if they are given the opportunity to do so.

Tools, equipment, technology used

Perusall is an online tool that promotes social learning, where students can consult material uploaded by the teacher, comment on it, post answers to and upvotes other students’ etc. In CRITICARE, it is used as a tool for flipped classroom (class time based on students’ comments and questions in Perusall). Link: https://app.perusall.com/ CRITICARE activities include the writing of essays critically evaluating and connecting provided case studies with concepts learnt in the class (see Document 2 for an example). This is still out of reach for AI and plagiarism, as this requires a mix of created content and reflection. As mentioned in 5.1., CRITICARE uses peer review based on the Calibrated Peer Review tool ( http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/Overview ). CRITICARE uses Kolb’s experiential learning tool to organize the structure of a class. It is meant to improve deep learning, and goes as a cycle: Activity (“what did I do?”), Reflection (“What did I experience?”), Conceptualization (“Why did that happen?”) and Application “What do I do next?”).

Outcomes and outputs, main results

The first hint that the CRITICARE method works is to ask students directly. I received emails from alumni after the course, such as: “Your course really inspired me long term. I really credit a lot of my passion to your courses. They really challenged me in a very good way and made me very motivated to go further in that direction. Thank you once again for broadening my horizons and for inspiring me scientifically. I will always have a place for you and your courses in my heart :)” Emilia Marchlińska, alumni from the courses “Plant Epigenetics” and “Transposable Elements” Student evaluations are also organized by Charles University, and the courses using CRITICARE have a satisfaction grade of 84% over the last 5 years (source: https://hodnoceni.natur.cuni.cz ). However, several studies have shown that student evaluation of teachers and courses is not a good proxy for how much the students learn (Uttl et al., 2017). The goal of the CRITICARE method is not to be liked by students, but that the students achieve the learning outcomes of a given course. To measure that, the grades can be looked at. Over the 5 years I have been using this method, the average grade across all students is 1.73 / 4, between “excellent” and “good” (Czech system: 1 is “excellent”, 2 is “good”, 3 is “pass”, 4 is “fail”). The CRITICARE impact on student performance also got external feedback. In one course, the students entered the class without knowing anything about the topic (a specific type of DNA parasite called transposons). In one semester nevertheless, the students wrote as a team a literature review on the topic that critically assessed the available knowledge and identified gaps to address. This article has been peer reviewed by international experts and is now published in a well-known scientific journal in the field (Epigenetics): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/15592294.2021.2022066#abstract This shows that in one semester, the students were able to reach a level of understanding of the topic that was of high enough standards to be accepted by scientific experts.

Lessons learnt

Traditional teaching methods are about to “delivering” the maximum of information possible to the students. CRITICARE is about quality, not quantity. In a time where information is overflowing and widely available, CRITICARE is about training to use and critically evaluate this information instead of storing it, and it is about the deep and long-term understanding of a topic. As a course is limited in time, it necessarily means reducing the amount of content “delivered” to make space in the classroom for thinking, discussing, analyzing, theorizing. But it does mean that the first time using CRITICARE, one teacher may be overambitious regarding the amount of information “covered”. For this to work, it requires the teacher to adjust trial after trial to know what amount of “raw content” will be enough to provide a good theoretical ground AND leave enough space for students to think and engage into active learning. Here, the temptation may be high to go back to traditional teaching methods to cover more content, led by the fear that the students will not “learn enough things” and thus that one might not be a good teacher. The students nevertheless learn something invaluable as they develop their capacity to think critically, and it is important for the teacher to keep this in mind to stay motivated. The reaction of students at first encounter of the CRITICARE method may also not be very encouraging for the teacher: if students have mostly experienced so far to sit and listen to a teacher, it might be quite scary for them to suddenly be given the responsibility to do things. They may thus first show resistance and what may seem like a lack of interest. If this happens, it is important not to take this as a lack of motivation, but instead for what it really is: a likely mix of fear, surprise and confusion. And instead of then going for repressive measures, what may work best is to reassure them that it is ok to make “mistakes”, that you trust their ideas, that you understand this may be new/scary and yet reminding them the skills they can gain from it.

Adaptability and sustainability of the best practice (for other institutions)

CRITICARE requires simple starting training workshop about the main concepts that are quite intuitive, and how to implement them (Bloom’s taxonomy, active learning, etc). It only requires teachers and educational program guarantors to be willing to do the shift. Just as any new method, CRITICARE requires some time investment in the first time of implementation. Once implemented, CRITICARE may not only require less investment from the teachers than a traditional method (since students lead the class and the teacher is here to guide their thinking), but it may be also more rewarding, fostering the teachers’ motivation to keep going. In terms of financial investment, CRITICARE can be implemented with virtually no funding, which has been my case.

Promotion of best practice

First, I have created and am teaching a “PhD school” course at Charles University meant to provide soft skills to PhD students for their future career. In there, I teach the teaching methods describe in this application. Link: https://is.cuni.cz/studium/eng/predmety/index.php?tid=&do=predmet&kod=MB120C126 Then, I regularly teach informal workshops at the Department of Botany (where I am affiliated) for colleagues about the teaching methods explained in this application. Moreover, I was invited in 2023 to lead a workshop on these teaching methods for the “Methods in Plant Science” Conference. The conference was made of researchers of all career stage (from PhD students to professors). Link: https://csebr.cz/program_methods-in-plant-sciences_en/ Finally, I wrote a piece in a national popular science magazine (Vesmir) about these teaching methods. The readership goes from highschool students to professors. Article here: https://vesmir.cz/cz/casopis/archiv-casopisu/2021/cislo-9/jak-muzeme-dosahnout-vynikajici-urovne-vyuky.html#english

Scope and impact

• Course/department level
• Institutional level
• EU/EHEA/International level

At the course and department level, it is crucial to train students for thinking skills that will be required in their cursus, especially for their Master and potentially PhD thesis. In addition, internationalization is a priority for Charles University, and the CRITICARE courses are taught in English and thus accessible to foreign students and teachers. CRITICARE is very much student-centred and learning outcome-based, which is a priority of EHEA and the Bologna process.

6.1 Digitalization

• Outstanding, innovative, excellent practices of online / blended / hybrid learning
• Digital skills development and assessment both general and profession-related, embedded in course design, in teaching and assessment

Reasoning: I use the tool “Perusall” mentioned in the section 5.2, an online tool where students go through educational material, comment on specific aspects, reply to and upvote each other’s posts. I use their exchanges as the basis of the in-class work, an example of blended teaching. Also, the courses I am teaching involves bioinformatics, and assignments include the use of digital tools dedicated to the study of DNA. We particularly use the online tool Galaxy (https://usegalaxy.eu/), but also R coding.

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6.2 Internationalization

• Developing students' multicultural awareness
• Courses implemented in international cooperation (projects, co-teaching, virtual/blended mobility, etc.)
• Courses offered to international multicultural students both online and offline

Reasoning: All the courses are taught in English, and usually >50% of students are foreigners. The nationalities of the students are worldwide, including Indian, Chinese, Iranian, US, Colombian, and from diverse EU countries. The courses involve guest expert teachers from different countries and institutes, such as Max Planck (Germany), CNRS (France), Uppsala University (Sweden). Together with the learning activities involving teamwork, debate and discussion (see section 5.1 for details on these activities), this fosters an environment of multicultural exchange among students and between students and teachers. Most courses are about natural sciences, where global issues are part of the content (namely climate changes and the impact of humans on biodiversity and domestication). In addition, I created and teach a course dedicated to PhD students soft skills, a “PhD School” course, which includes training on the resolution of interpersonal and intercultural miscommunication and subsequent conflict.

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6.3 Inclusion and diversity, universal design

• Alternative, flexible assessment methods for students with special needs

Reasoning: I am always ready to adapt assignments to the needs of students. For example, last year, one student was seriously ill at home for weeks, and I modified the assignments so that the students could do them at home, and I also had a few online Q&A calls with this student.

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6.4 Sustainability

• Teaching material contains profession related sustainability aspects

Reasoning: The courses I am teaching are related to biodiversity, and I frame the knowledge of these courses in the context of global changes, loss of biodiversity and threats for species.

3.3 Public contact datas

Name	Email address	Website
Clément Lafon Placette	lafonplc@natur.cuni.cz