Strengthening School Connectedness to Increase Student Success
Category: Student Well-Being
Instrument Overview
The CAT instrument is a unique tool designed to assess and promote the improvement of critical thinking and real-world problem solving skills. Most of the questions require short answer essay responses, and a detailed scoring guide helps ensure good scoring reliability. The CAT instrument is scored by the institution's own faculty using the detailed scoring guide. During the scoring process faculty are able to see their students' weaknesses and understand areas that need improvement. Faculty are encouraged to use the CAT instrument as a model for developing authentic assessments and learning activities in their own discipline that improve students' critical thinking and real-world problem solving skills. These features help close the loop in assessment and quality improvement.
Note: The overview provided for this instrument includes content that may have been sourced from the instrument publisher's or author’s website (or other site providing information about the instrument). This information is presented for educational and informational purposes only. If you have any questions about the content or its permitted uses, please contact annenberg@brown.edu.
Organization
Topic
Student Well-Being Category
American Institutes for Research® partnered with the Annenberg Institute at Brown University to collect instruments related to student well-being.
Content
Grades
Post secondary
Keywords
Cognition ; Critical Thinking and Cognition ; Responsible Decision Making ; Critical Thinking ; Problem Solving
Languages
English,
Arabic
Respondent
Student
Administration Information
Length
30-45 minutes
Administration
Computer,
Paper
Access and Use
Contact
Assistant Director of Testing
Elizabeth Lisic
elisic@tntech.edu
931-372-3611
Open Access
No
Setting
College
Psychometrics (additional guidance)
Psychometric References
Technical Manual - Tennessee Technological University (2016) CAT© Instrument Technical Information: https://www.tntech.edu/cat/pdf/reports/CAT_Technical_Information_V8.pdf
National Science Foundation Final Report - https://www.tntech.edu/cat/pdf/reports/Project_CAT_Final_Report.pdf
