CONTRIBUTION OF AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT TASKS IN DEVELOPING CRITICAL AND INNOVATIVE THINKING SKILLS IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

In 21st century, the development and assessment of critical and innovative thinking skills is at the core of higher education level programs. For academic institutions, charged with equipping graduates to compete in today’s knowledge economy with growing recognition that individuals need a wide array of skills in order to meet the needs of the modern workplace. In this context, our existing assessment procedures are unable for developing measuring these above mentioned skills and traits with traditional assessment procedures. In this context, a panel survey study was designed to examine the development of critical and innovative thinking skills through an intervention of authentic assessment tasks using learning management system (LMS). A cohort of MPhil students (N=38) was pretested and went through an intervention of two semesters in which ten different tasks were given to students for developing critical and innovative thinking skills. At the end of course assessment tasks were evaluated against a rubric to find the evidence of critical and innovative thinking skills in completing tasks and a post-test of skills was taken. Internal validity threats were controlled during intervention and reliability of scale was ensured (α=.965). The findings of the study highlighted a significant positive change in the development of students ability to draw conclusions (p= .004), decision making (p=.013) and Implementing new ideas (p=.000). The space for creativity and implementing new ideas in given assignment tasks helped students to enhance critical and innovative thinking skills using learning management system at Allama Iqbal Open University.