Biology Department Assessment Pilot Carla Hass

Assessment Plan Objective: To measure student learning on a specific topic, meiosis, through the use of specific questions on exams Evidence: Performance on multiple choice questions related to this top placing them on: –a pretest –an exam during the semester –the final (use the most challenging questions) –a pretest for a course that has Bio 110 as a prerequisite (we used Bio 240W)

Assessment Development Met with a group of faculty from departments that offer a degree in Biology (UP, Altoona, Behrend, Abington plus two other interested campuses) Initial meeting was seven people plus moderator Decided as a group to focus on the single topic – meiosis Decided upon using exam questions due to class sizes at UP with the hope of developing a tool that could be used at multiple campuses Set up an ANGEL group for assessment Wrote the pretest for use in the fall semester and sent it to the members of the group for their comment/use Specified learning goals/objectives during the semester

Helpful strategies –Involving multiple campuses –Having a face-to-face meeting –Having an “outside” moderator (Suzanne Weinstein) Barriers –Agreeing on questions to use – never reached complete agreement so initial attempt may be of limited use across campuses –Multiple faculty teaching separate sections of the same course at the same campus using different exams

Initial Data Collection AY 11/12 So far…… Fall Bio 110 –Pretest – 44 questions – 7 on meiosis –Exams 2 and 4 – used 6 of these questions –Final exam – repeated two questions Spring Bio 110 –Pretest – identical to Fall Bio 110 Spring Bio 240W –Pretest – used 3 questions relevant to material in that course (need to be able to ask during the semester)

Learning gains were made during the semester The questions will be used on the Bio 230W pretest in Fall 2012

Learning gains during the semester persisted into the next course

Material not covered in Bio 110 showed little learning gain in pretest for the next course in the sequence This material is covered in Bio 240W and learning gains will be assessed by including this question on an exam during the semester