Using a Repetitive Instructional Intervention to Improve Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills

The ability to synthesize and communicate complicated problems with confidence is paramount for success in STEM fields, but programs tend to overemphasize memorization. We conducted a preliminary study to determine if asking students to repeatedly link materials 1) improved students' ability to build connections, and 2) increased students' confidence. Student accuracy and complexity response scores increased over the 5-week experiment, but student confidence did not. Our findings indicate the importance of providing students across STEM disciplines with as many opportunities as possible to practice using higher-order thinking skills to the benefit of STEM fields, educational programs, and students.