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Strengthening critical thinking in engineering students

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International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM) Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Governments, accreditation agencies and employers are increasingly interested in the development of a set of soft skills in students among which critical thinking is found to be a highly relevant skill for engineers in order to meet the requirements of future job markets. In addition, there is great effort in the universities to include cognitive tools in their different engineering programs for training and developing these soft skills. The purpose of this study is to design strategies that develop critical thinking in engineering students, using three specific cognitive tools: (1) the enrichment of the vocabulary corpus; (2) the formation of coherent speech habits; and (3) the practice of argumentation and opinion. To achieve the objectives of this work, activities of the artistic-narrative modality of thinking in addition to the traditional logical-scientific modality of thinking were incorporated in the classroom. The results showed a substantial improvement in the development of the particular soft skill, critical thinking, in engineering students.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial and the technical support of Writing Lab, TecLabs, and Tecnologico de Monterrey in the production of this work. The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Novus Grant with PEP no. PHHT090-17CX00001, TecLabs, Tecnologico de Monterrey, in the production of this work. The authors would like to acknowledge the students of the courses M2003, TE2042 and TE3053 who so kindly and selflessly participated in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechatronics Department, School of Engineering, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico, Mexico

    Patricia Caratozzolo

  2. Language Department, School of Social Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico, Mexico

    Alvaro Alvarez-Delgado

  3. Writing Lab, TecLabs, Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Transferencia de Tecnología, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, NL, Mexico

    Samira Hosseini

  4. Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, NL, Mexico

    Samira Hosseini

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  1. Patricia Caratozzolo
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  2. Alvaro Alvarez-Delgado
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  3. Samira Hosseini
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Correspondence to Patricia Caratozzolo or Samira Hosseini.

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Caratozzolo, P., Alvarez-Delgado, A. & Hosseini, S. Strengthening critical thinking in engineering students. Int J Interact Des Manuf 13, 995–1012 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12008-019-00559-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12008-019-00559-6

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