ZOO 462/562: Environmental Toxocology and Risk Assessment
Dr. Oris was interested in developing better ways to design assignments, to provide guidance to students about expectations, and to evaluate student performance on critical thinking skills. Dr. Oris focused on the research proposal that students completed for the course.

Several weeks prior to the first draft deadline, Dr. Oris conducted a lecture/discussion on proposal writing, including information about the critical thinking skills involved in proposal writing. Dr. Oris also provided students with both the short-form and long-form rubrics to use while they were writing their proposals. Students' first drafts of their proposals were reviewed and critiqued by Dr. Oris and by one of the graduate students in the class using the long form of the rubric. Final drafts of the research proposals were also evaluated by Dr. Oris using the long-form rubric.

Because the class had students ranging from senior undergraduates to sixth-year doctoral students, the expectation for levels of achievement were applied differentially. Undergraduates and less-experienced graduate students were expected to achieve the second-highest level of excellence (3 on a 4 point scale), and the most- experienced Ph.D. students were expected to achieve the highest level. These expectations were made explicitly clear to the students.

Dr. Oris found that developing the materials for the project helped clarify and solidify the proposal writing assignment for the students. Students generally were able to achieve or exceed the level of critical thinking expectations by the second draft of their proposal. The rubric also made it much easier to evaluate proposals for critical thinking and analytic achievement, although it did not make the overall grading process easier.

Assignments

Research Proposal Assignment

Detailed Guidelines for Research Proposal (Lecture Presentation)

Rubrics

Research Proposal Rubric