An Study to increase the Critical Thinking
and problem Solving Abilities by Web-based Learning
RONG-JYUE FANG 1, CHIEN-CHUNG LIN2 , HUNG -JEN YANG3, CHI -JEN LEE4,
*HUA- LIN TSAI 5, TIEN-SHENG TSAI 6,
1
Chair Professor, Department of Information Management, Southern Taiwan University of
Technology, Taiwan
2
Professor, Department of Business Administration / Graduate Institute of Management
Meiho Institute of Technology, Pingtung County, Taiwan
3
Department of Industrial Technology Education National Kaohsiung Normal University,
Taiwan
4 ,5 ,6
Graduate student, Department of Industrial Technology Education, National Kaohsiung Normal
University, Taiwan *No.188, Zhong yi St., Fengshan City, Kaohsiung County 830,Taiwan
*kittyhl@gmail.com,rxf26@mail.stut.edu.tw,gendion.lin@gmail.com, Hungjen.yang@gmail.com,
mickeylee@mail.loxa.com,
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to understand the experimental effects of web-based critical thinking
instruction program for promoting students’ abilities. The methodology is experiment instruction with two
tools: “The test of critical thinking skills for k-9 students” and “The test of problem-solving abilities for
primary school students”. It found that students’ critical thinking and problem-solving abilities has been
promoted after performing web-based critical thinking instruction. The results can be given reference for
teachers to innovative instruction and performance in web-based instruction.
Key-Words: web-based instruction, critical thinking instruction, problem-solving abilities.
1
Motivation and Purpose
It’s an important development trend of today’s
educational technology to integrate information
into instruction. Owing to the fast improvement of
www, communication technology, computer
technology and software and technology, it can be
foreseen that information technology must be the
initial element of present education and instruction
[21].There are also various studies on the
possibilities of web-based instruction. Jian-Sheng
Ro [10] indicated that there are four features of
web-based
instruction
including
sharing,
interaction, advancement and globalization.
However, according to the quantitative analysis on
436 worldwide instruction websites by
Mioduser, Machmias, Lahav and Oren [14], there
are 52.5% of websites inspiring the learners’
cognition processes by information acquisition,
42% by mechanical learning, 32.6% by analyzing
and reasoning, and only 5% involving the
problem-solving and project decision.
Among the thinking abilities, critical thinking and
creative one are most popular [22]. The two
abilities always complement each other in our
daily life. Besides, criticizing and creative
thinking are necessary prior abilities for
problem-solving [12] [24]. From Hambermas's
theory of democracy, there are two priorities
reaching a consensus by debate. First, those who
attend the debate must be reasonable enough to
communicate and judge the reality, legitimacy,
and sincerity. Second, “an ideal talking
situation”[23]. This mold of discovery and
participation allows students to be the master of
learning, encourages them to develop the thinking
ability, creativity, and builds up their values and
worldview [7] [27].
2 Literature Review
2.1 Meaning and features of critical
thinking instruction
Critical thinking is a high level of cognitive
ability. According to Ennis [17], critical thinking
is to “decide what to be believed or to be the
focused reflective and reasonable thinking.”In
view of problem-solving, critical thinking is an
intellectual activity of choosing proper hypotheses
or answers[12] [2]. Norris and Ennis [17] argued
that critical thinking can be regarded as a part of
problem-solving process generally. In the
intension of critical thinking argued by Norris &
Ennis (Fig 1), critical thinking background,
knowledge, ability and tendency are initial
conditions to critical thinking. The establishment
of democratic and legal society relies on citizens’
judging ability. If they are asked for objective and
correct judgement, there must be a critical
thinking
instruction
since
they
were
little.(Te-Hwei Sheu, 1991).
Decision of belief and action
value
judging
deduction
on
induction
Clearing
critical thinking ability. Therefore, while there is
critical thinking instruction, teachers have to play
the role of guide for learning and offering students
learning scaffolding properly for their active
self-organizing and learning[11] [7].
d. Instruction contents
It’s an important feature to link the context of
instruction contents among critical thinking
instruction. Besides the proper situation context,
students have to be taught to develop the thinking
process
from
being
contextualized
to
de-contextualized.
the intention of
critical thinking
Inference
Foundation laying, information:
From others, from observation, accepted conclusions
（mentioned）, knowledge from experience, educational
background and surroundings
Problem-solving
Interaction with external world and others
Fig 1 the intension of critical thinking
(Norris & Ennis, 1989, p6)
The “Provisional Schema of Grade 1-9
Integrated Curriculum(first step)”by the Ministry
of Education stresses the cultivation of ten basic
abilities from seven fields for students to apply in
their future life. Among them, “independent
thinking and problem-solving ability”are to
cultivate students with independent thinking
ability and reflection habits, and hope that they
can judge and solve problems as well as conflicts
systematically. Which means that students have to
be equipped with abilities of problem-solving,
critical thinking and make reasonable decision?
2.2
Critical thinking
problem-solving
instruction
and
a. Encountering problems: confusion or difficulty
created on emotional cognizing of things
b.Defining problems: distinguishing the problems
from confused situation
c. Developing assumptions: advancing possible
proposals of solving problems according to the
situation of problems.
d.Verifying assumptions: verifying the possible
proposals step by step is to see if they are
available.
e. Application ：Applying the proposals to real
situation for solving problems.
Regarding to the problem-solving instruction,
Kuo, Yo-Yu [28] argued that its design of
problem situation is based on teaching materials to
make students have queries and discover answers
to develop ability of problem-solving. Fang,
Chong-Xiong [1] assumed that problem-solving
instruction is to use problem-solving mold to
develop a learning report and integrate the
problem-solving steps into teaching activities.
2.3 Features of World Wide Web
a. Classroom situation and class atmosphere.
a-1. Be safe and warm, encouraged expression.
a-2. Debate on dialogue, multiple interaction.
a-3. Mistake allowance, respect to others.
a-4. Detect prejudice, avoid arbitrary conclusion.
b. Peers’ interaction
b-1. Cooperative learning and social construction.
b-2. Brave query and interactive debates.
c. Roles of teacher-student
A proper instruction and training to students in
active and safe situation will promote students’
World Wide Web originated from U.S.A. in 1980.
It connects different websites to form a global
channel for information conveying and offer
information service. The services are e-mail, file
request, remote access and e-bulletin board [29].
Hypermedia is one of the features of www. It
derived from Hypertext and is a non-sequential
data management. It saves the data in the nodes of
web and connects them by linking. The different
types of nodes and links can form diversiform
information construction, and display the intended
subjects [16].
Another feature of www is the connection of
network. The development of net construction is
from a data communication of peer-to-peer to a
computer local area networks(LAN), and then
becomes a connection of metropolitan area
networks(MAN)and wide area networks(WAN)[9].
WWW adopts Client-Server Architecture and the
browser of application end, such as Nescape that
can be executed on different terminals, and the
server is operated on remote machine.
3 Methodology
3.1 Study tools
a. Teaching website of critical thinking mold
PHP-Nuke [19] is a free software. It can be used
to set up an instructional website and manage
easily. Hopefully, the limit of time and classroom
can be disappeared with the assistance of
educational technology, and students can have
adequate thinking, criticizing, and reflecting, and
reach the effect of learning.
remarkable level of .001(N=277).
c. Test of Problem Solving Ability for Primary
School Students
There are four main questions in the questionnaire
[20], and five sub-questions with each main
question. Pretest and posttest are held for this test.
The first and second main questions belong to
pretest, the third and fourth ones belong to posttest.
The two tests are replicated and the correlation of
their reliability tests reaches a remarkable level
of .01. The correlation for general test is .482,
and .473, .479, .501, .486 and .481 for sub-tests.
Besides, the Cronbach value of internal
consistency for pretest is .706, .676 for posttest,
and .784 for the whole test. Regarding to the
construct validity, the correlation of internal
consistency is .531~.876 which reaches the
remarkable level of .01.
3.2 Objectives for the study
b. Test of Critical Thinking Skills for Primary
and Secondary School Students
This study adopts “ Test of Critical Thinking
Skills for Primary and Secondary School
Students” [30]to test students’ ability of critical
thinking through web-based instruction. There are
five sub-skills in the test: 1. verifying
assumption(hypothesis), 2. inference, 3. deduction,
4. illustration and 5. evaluation. That means there
are five sub-scales with 24 questions. Five
questions are from part one to part four (Q.1-20),
and have three options for each question. Question
21-24 of part five have two options. There are 25
minutes limitation for secondary school students
and 30 minutes for primary ones. When index of
difficulty is .37~.87, the average is .66; when
index of discrimination is .25~.71, the average
is .46. This test is edited with appropriate
questions and discrimination. Its Alpha coefficient
is .80, which is higher than pilot-test scale. The
Alpha coefficients of the five sub-scales
“verifying hypothesis”, “inference”, “deduction”,
“illustration”
and
“evaluation
“are .27,.46,.60,.43, and.54(N=277). The five
coefficients are higher than those on pilot-test
scales except the one for “deduction”. There is a
high correlation between the general scale and
sub-scales, its correlation coefficient is .630~.790,
reaching a remarkable level of .001. There is a
moderate correlation between the five scales and
its coefficient is .313~.540, which also reaches a
The objectives of this study are the fifth grade
students of Zhen-Bei Primary School in
Kaohsiung County, and examples of two classes
are chosen randomly. One class is assigned as the
experimental group for web-based instruction on
critical thinking, another one is the controlled
group for traditional instruction on critical
thinking. There are 20 students for each group and
the total number is 40.
3.3 Experiment Design
Quasi-experimental design is adopted in this study
and shown as table 1.
Table 1. Experimental Design
Group
Pretest
Tested
Controlled
O1
O3
Experimental Posttest
treatment
X1
O2
X2
O4
O1, O3: Experimental and Controlled groups take
tests of “Scale on Critical Chinking”and “Test
of Problem Solving Ability for Primary School
Students”(pretest).
X1: Experimental group takes the test pf
web-based instruction on critical thinking for
five weeks.
X2: Controlled group takes the traditional
instruction on critical thinking for five weeks.
O2, O4: Two groups take tests of “Scale on
Critical Chinking”and “Test of Problem
Solving Ability for Primary School
Students”(posttest).
4 Results and Discussion
4.1 About “Critical thinking ability”
It can be found from the F value on table 2 about
the “Test of Critical Thinking Skills for Primary
and Secondary School Students”showing that the
difference
of
the
two
groups
is
remarkable(F=4.939, p<.05). From the adjusting
mean of table 3, the total scores (12.24)of students
of experimental group on test of critical thinking
skills is better than students of controlled
one(10.36). Thus, it can be argued that the critical
thinking ability of students of experimental group
gets great promotion after the teaching test.
Table 2. Analysis of covariance for “Test of Critical
Thinking Skills for Primary and Secondary
School Students”
Variance origin
SS
df
MS
F
Sig.
Between Groups
(teaching project)
in the groups
(deviation)
35.133
1
35.133
4.939
.032*
263.183
37
7.113
Table3. The mean and standard deviation for “Test of
Critical Thinking Skills for Primary and
Secondary School Students”
N
Tested
Controlled
pretest
posttest
adjusting mean
pretest
posttest
adjusting mean
20
20
M
11.95
12.15
12.24
12.15
10.45
10.36
SD
2.33
3.67
3.10
3.46
4.2 About “Problem-solving ability”
It founds from table 4 that the F value for total
scores on the “Test of Problem Solving Ability
for Primary School Students”showing a
remarkable difference between the two
groups(F=4.418, p<.05). From the adjusting mean
of table 5, the total scores (15.30)of students of
experimental group on test of problem-solving
ability is better than students of controlled
one(12.40). Thus, it can be argued that the
problem-solving
ability
of
students
of
experimental group gets great promotion after the
teaching test.
Table 4. Analysis of covariance for “Test of Problem
Solving Ability for Primary School Students”
Variance origin
between
groups(teaching
project)
in the
groups(deviation)
SS
80.242
671.968
df MS
1 80.242
37
F
4.418
Sig.
.042*
18.161
Table 5. The mean and standard deviation for “Test of
Problem Solving Ability for Primary School
Students”
N
Tested
pretest
posttest
20
adjusting mean
Controlled
SD
13.85
5.91
15.85
4.79
15.30
pretest
11.60
4.61
posttest
11.85
5.09
adjusting mean
20
12.40
5. Conclusion
According to above-mentioned experiment, the
conclusion is ： “The practice of web-based
instruction on critical thinking promotes
effectively students’ abilities on critical thinking
and problem-solving”. Moreover, it founds that
there are features of unlimited time and classroom
for web-based instruction. Students can use more
time to have interactive discussion on line under
the limited time, and make the activity more
smoothly. Because people can be anonymous on
line, some introverted students can express their
ideas and thoughts with fearless on line and
practice their critical thinking.
Therefore, we have some suggestions for
educational purpose and later studies according to
the literature review. [a] To develop multiple
teaching programs on critical thinking.[b] There
are differences from web-based instruction on
critical thinking because of the courses, study time
and objectives.[c] The qualitative study can be
tried to discuss on students’ ability development
of critical thinking and problem-solving.
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