ASSESSING STUDENTS’ PROFESSIONAL CRITICISM SKILLS – A MATHEMATICS COURSE CASE

Becoming a professional engineer (or other professional careers) requires you to give and receive critique in a non-personal and constructive manner. However, many students cannot provide critique to and/or receive critique from fellow students. In this article, an assessment design for a math course where the student can make and review (critique) a mathematical demonstration (proof) is presented. The students find the assessment method fair but different from what they have seen before. To make room for practising the unusual assessment method, the course uses a flipped-class format. Class time is then used to have the students practice this new form. The practise helps the students to figure out what proper mathematical critique is, and they are more prepared for the final exam as well as constructively critique others’ work (not only mathematical work but in general engineering work)