Teaching Critical Appraisal

Teaching Critical Appraisal examines the concept of critical thinking, and implements a variety of methods to teach Life Sciences undergraduates critical appraisal skills. It also assesses the effectiveness of these teaching methods. Participants were 140 undergraduate students at the University of Birmingham, UK. Four seminars, one lecture, and one non-assessed Intranet (WebCT) based quiz were employed to teach and reinforce critical thinking. Different types of source material, including faux research proposals and real journal articles, were used and seminars gave opportunities for practice and group work. An online quiz and lecture were used to reinforce the skills dealt with by the initial seminars.