How Students Think about Experimental Design: Novel Conceptions Revealed by in-Class Activities
How Students Think about Experimental Design: Novel Conceptions Revealed by in-Class Activities
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DOI：
10.1093/biosci/bit016
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发表时间：
2014-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
10.1
通讯作者：
Crowe, Alison J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Brownell, Sara E.;Wenderoth, Mary Pat;Crowe, Alison J.
实验设计是科学家的一项基本技能，但在大型生物学入门课程中往往没有明确地教授这一技能。为了提高学生对实验设计的理解，我们在课堂上设计了两种纸笔活动：一种是分析活动，要求学生对数据进行评估；另一种是设计活动，要求学生提出一个新颖的实验。我们发现完成设计活动但没有完成分析活动的学生在扩展实验设计能力工具（E-EDAT）上的表现明显优于参加实验设计教学讲座的学生。通过对学生课堂活动反应的扎根理论，我们确定了一套新颖的准确和不准确的概念，重点关注实验设计的两个方面：样本量和实验的重复。这些发现可以用来帮助指导理科生掌握设计严谨实验的基本技能。
Experimental design is a fundamental skill for scientists, but it is often not explicitly taught in large introductory biology classes. We have designed two pencil-and-paper in-class activities to increase student understanding of experimental design: an analyze activity, in which students are asked to evaluate data, and a design activity, in which students are asked to propose a novel experiment. We found that students who completed the design activity but not the analyze activity performed significantly better on the Expanded Experimental Design Ability Tool (E-EDAT) than did students who attended a didactic lecture about experimental design. By using grounded theory on student responses on the in-class activities, we have identified a novel set of accurate and inaccurate conceptions focused on two aspects of experimental design: sample size and the repetition of experiments. These findings can be used to help guide science majors through mastering the fundamental skill of designing rigorous experiments.