Appraisal of Critical Thinking Skills in Animal Science Undergraduates who Participated on a Nationally Competitive Collegiate Judging Team.

Evaluation courses have remained an integral part of collegiate animal science programs throughout the country and are a precursor for a national judging team. An evaluation course focuses on teaching students general accepted criteria for evaluating a particular animal, industry standards and rules to compare multiple animals, and emphasizes students being able to defend their judgments both written and orally. These skills are necessary for building well-rounded graduates. Participation on a judging team has been associated with developing problem solving and decision making, employer preferred life skills (Boyd et al., 1992; Rusk et al., 2002). Eight students in the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences at Clemson University took a standardized critical thinking exam. Four of the students had never taken an evaluation course or competed on a judging team (N) and the remaining four had taken an evaluation course and competed on a national judging team (J). All students were similar in regards to age, gender, classification and GPA. Because of the low sample size, and lack of a pretest, the tentative conclusion that we can draw from this exercise is that students who have participated in national horse judging contests subsequently demonstrate a higher level of critical thinking ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]