Writing assignments boost critical thinking skills for landscape design students
Friday, April 1, 2011 - 16:40
in Psychology & Sociology
Dr. Ann Marie VanDerZanden is preparing students in her horticulture classes for challenging careers by boosting their critical thinking capacity. "Horticulture graduates entering the field of landscape design and installation must be able to integrate technical skills with practical applications. This requires higher-order thinking skills such as analysis and synthesis", VanDerZanden explained. The Iowa State University professor designed a curriculum that integrates reflective writing into a landscape design course and discovered that students' quiz scores increased significantly after they completed the writing exercises.
