Probing students' higher order thinking skills using pictorial style questions

The ability to use Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) plays a substantial role in determining students’ success in future studies. Therefore, it is important that students’ ability in this skill is continually refined by training and assessment. This paper explores the responses of first-year university students’ to a range of pictorial-style questions in chemical kinetics that require the use of HOTS. 80 food science and 57 chemistry students (137 in total) at The University of Reading (UoR) participated in the study. The results showed that many students demonstrated limited ability to answer HOTS questions. The implications for the teaching of chemical kinetics, particularly at the university level, are discussed.