BIOLOGY CONCEPT INVENTORIES: Development and Use

SCIENTIFIC TEACHING AAAS report “Science for all Americans”: Reform in science education should be founded on scientific teaching.

Handelsman et al. Scientific Teaching. Science. 2004: 304 (5670): 521–522. Teaching should be approached with the same rigor as science. Assessment of teaching techniques in controlled experiments has shown active learning strategies to engage students in study of science improve performance of students.

What is our primary goal as instructors?

A suitable educational goal is to have students thinking more like experts and approaching the mastery of the subject like an expert. Thus, it is desirable to have test instruments that measure student thinking on a scale that distinguishes between novice and expert thinking. - Adams and Wieman

What is a concept inventory?

A concept inventory is an outline of core knowledge and concepts for a given field and a collection of multiple choice questions designed to probe student understanding of these fundamental concepts. - Redish, 2000

HOW DO CONCEPT INVENTORIES DIFFER FROM STUDENT ASSESSMENT? CI probe students’ conceptual understanding. CI are based on research into student misconceptions. CI distracters are chosen to reflect common student misconceptions.

The primary goal [of a concept inventory] is not to obtain a summative assessment of student learning; rather, it is to provide formative assessment of teaching. - Adams and Wieman

BIOLOGY CONCEPT INVENTORIES & DIAGNOSTIC QUESTION CLUSTERS Published inventories: ◦ Osmosis and diffusion * ◦ Respiratory and cardiovascular physiology * ◦ Natural selection ◦ DQC: Tracing matter in dynamic systems ◦ Genetics and regulation of gene expression ◦ Molecular and cell biology ◦ Host-pathogen interactions ◦ DCQs on Thinking like a biologist website Inventories under development: ◦ Meiosis ◦ Prokaryotic cell structure & gene regulation ◦ Population, community, ecosystem ecology ◦ Speciation, phylogenetic trees

Adams W, Wieman C Development and validation of instruments to measure learning of expert-like thinking. International Journal of Science Education.

HOW TO DEVELOP A CONCEPT INVENTORY 1. Identification of key concepts by instructors 2. Qualitative research into student misconceptions 3. Development of a MC test in which student misconceptions are used as distracters 4. Validation interviews on test questions

HOW TO DEVELOP A CONCEPT INVENTORY 5. Administer pre-tests (before instruction) and post-tests (after instruction) to a large class, typically several hundred, and determine learning gain. 6. Statistical analyses Reliability of the test as a whole Item analysis: P – Item difficulty D – Item discrimination

USING CONCEPT INVENTORIES - Assess student learning gains in conceptual understanding Compare the effectiveness of different teaching techniques in promoting conceptual understanding

How else can concept inventories be used?

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