Products / Reflections / … UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? NW-PULSE @ NW Biology instructors Conference 2017 Power Score Assessment for Biology Majors NORTH SEATTLE COLLEGE Brian Saunders, Hugo Alamillo, Katie Barndt VISION – To assess student learning and concept retention of Biology majors MAIN GOAL– To develop a tool that best assesses student learning and understanding in the Biology major series (Biol 211, 212, 213) and identify how well students retain and apply knowledge to advanced courses Photos should be at least 300dpi, but not more than 5-12 mgs each. Your poster is set to be enlarged 200% so do not change the page size to fit another poster size. Posters (3’ x 4’) will be printed at WWU using the same purchase order at the same time. Please email your poster as a PPT file to by Joann Otto at WWU by Wednesday, April 21, 2017, by 5 pm. Please contact Joann Otto (Joann.Otto@wwu.edu) with questions about poster printing. Also please put your institution “logo” on your poster. Please note that this template is provided to simplify your effort to prepare a poster for the NW Biology meeting. You can change the font size, colors, column widths, add photos, institutional logos, graphics, etc. This template can also be used as a starting point and you can be as creative as you want in your poster. However, we would like to have all of the posters the same size and we will be printed at the same time, at the same print shop in order to easily pay for printing with one purchase order. ACTIONS BARRIERS & CHALLENGES Products / Reflections / … Development of Power Score Assessment. Design diagnostic questions where answers can assess level of student understanding Answers are ‘ranked’ quantitatively which calculates a student Power Score Power scores are statistically analyzed between different biology cohorts Developing solid diagnostic questions. Variability of Instructor teaching methods makes it difficult to identify ‘best practices’ for instruction Section sizes of Biology series are not equal Heterogeneity of student background Reflection of Diagnostic Questions using Power Scoring (PS) Why do cells perform cellular respiration? To produce oxygen (PS = 0.0) To supply cells with carbon (PS = 0.33) To gain energy from food molecules (PS = 0.66) To produce ATP from food energy (PS = 1.0) SUSTAINABILITY STRENGTHS & LEVERAGE RESOURCES & ALLIES Initial study acts as a baseline for future analysis Strong statistical assessment. Identifies topics students have greatest difficulty understanding / retaining for advanced courses Strong Biology Instructor pool Can be used as Program Review and accreditation evaluation Strong support from Administration Could be used to assess active learning (AL) teaching strategies more accurately Low cost UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? Pre-Biology students showed strong initial Power Scores (see Figure 1) Assessment of Bio 212 students may reflect summer quarter bias FUTURE GOALS We hope to use the Power Score assessment to re-evaluate student learning using more active, inquiry-based teaching strategies Box plots represent 95% confidence interval (thick lines), Q1, median and Q3 with notch 95% confidence interval for median. This work was supported in part by an NSF RCN UBE award # 1345033.