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Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations

Researchers, instructors, and funding bodies in biology education are unanimous about the importance of developing students’ competence in experimental design. Despite this, only limited measures are available for assessing such competence development, especially in the areas of molecular and cellul...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dasgupta, Annwesa P., Anderson, Trevor R., Pelaez, Nancy J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4909332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27146159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-03-0077
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author Dasgupta, Annwesa P.
Anderson, Trevor R.
Pelaez, Nancy J.
author_facet Dasgupta, Annwesa P.
Anderson, Trevor R.
Pelaez, Nancy J.
author_sort Dasgupta, Annwesa P.
collection PubMed
description Researchers, instructors, and funding bodies in biology education are unanimous about the importance of developing students’ competence in experimental design. Despite this, only limited measures are available for assessing such competence development, especially in the areas of molecular and cellular biology. Also, existing assessments do not measure how well students use standard symbolism to visualize biological experiments. We propose an assessment-design process that 1) provides background knowledge and questions for developers of new “experimentation assessments,” 2) elicits practices of representing experiments with conventional symbol systems, 3) determines how well the assessment reveals expert knowledge, and 4) determines how well the instrument exposes student knowledge and difficulties. To illustrate this process, we developed the Neuron Assessment and coded responses from a scientist and four undergraduate students using the Rubric for Experimental Design and the Concept-Reasoning Mode of representation (CRM) model. Some students demonstrated sound knowledge of concepts and representations. Other students demonstrated difficulty with depicting treatment and control group data or variability in experimental outcomes. Our process, which incorporates an authentic research situation that discriminates levels of visualization and experimentation abilities, shows potential for informing assessment design in other disciplines.
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spelling pubmed-49093322016-06-24 Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations Dasgupta, Annwesa P. Anderson, Trevor R. Pelaez, Nancy J. CBE Life Sci Educ Article Researchers, instructors, and funding bodies in biology education are unanimous about the importance of developing students’ competence in experimental design. Despite this, only limited measures are available for assessing such competence development, especially in the areas of molecular and cellular biology. Also, existing assessments do not measure how well students use standard symbolism to visualize biological experiments. We propose an assessment-design process that 1) provides background knowledge and questions for developers of new “experimentation assessments,” 2) elicits practices of representing experiments with conventional symbol systems, 3) determines how well the assessment reveals expert knowledge, and 4) determines how well the instrument exposes student knowledge and difficulties. To illustrate this process, we developed the Neuron Assessment and coded responses from a scientist and four undergraduate students using the Rubric for Experimental Design and the Concept-Reasoning Mode of representation (CRM) model. Some students demonstrated sound knowledge of concepts and representations. Other students demonstrated difficulty with depicting treatment and control group data or variability in experimental outcomes. Our process, which incorporates an authentic research situation that discriminates levels of visualization and experimentation abilities, shows potential for informing assessment design in other disciplines. American Society for Cell Biology 2016 /pmc/articles/PMC4909332/ /pubmed/27146159 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-03-0077 Text en © 2016 A. P. Dasgupta et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2016 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0). “ASCB®”and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology.
spellingShingle Article
Dasgupta, Annwesa P.
Anderson, Trevor R.
Pelaez, Nancy J.
Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations
title Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations
title_full Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations
title_fullStr Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations
title_full_unstemmed Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations
title_short Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations
title_sort development of the neuron assessment for measuring biology students’ use of experimental design concepts and representations
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4909332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27146159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-03-0077
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