Enhancing Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills through Reflective and Collaborative Learning: A Quasi-Experimental Study

One of the main goals of academic institutions is to develop students' analytical and critical thinking abilities; however, traditional teaching modes do not provide the desired result. A study carried out recently suggested that integrating reflective and collaborative activities not only increases, but also activates these abilities. Such research, focusing on joint applications of these two methods, is still in its infancy. This research tries to fill this gap by exploring the effect of a blended instructional approach on the learning of medical students in Yunnan Medical Health College. For over 20 class sessions, the experimental group consisted of students working together on project for which they later had to reflect, while those in the control group were taught using traditional methods. Control and experimental groups showed remarkable growth in analytical and critical thinking skills, with the pre- and post-test data statistically significant. These findings prove that reflective and cooperative teaching methods offer consistent quality improvement tools; these findings have important implications for the improvement of undergraduate courses in higher education. The research presents supporting information based on which using better teaching methods which aim at the enhancement of cognitive skills should be implemented.