Updating Beliefs? Insights from a Course on International Development

• In Event: Preparing Students for New Challenges

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of assignments on critical thinking skills in the context of a course on International Development taught to Public Policy graduate students. One of core assignments requires students to submit a short paragraph of reading notes prior to each session. Our dataset includes longitudinal student-produced content over a ten year period consisting in over 1400 individual submissions. The participants are very diverse across geographical lines, as well as in terms of professional experience. Via automated content and sentiment analysis, we investigate two questions: first, the impact of the assignment on analytical precision and critical thinking, and second, the effect of student characteristics on topic-specific ex ante beliefs and positions.

Authors

• Cristina Corduneanu-Huci, Central European University Private University

• Nu Thuy Duong Ton, Central European University