WWW and Internet Dissemination of Biology and Computer Labs for Prospective Elementary Teachers and of a Biology Test for Conceptual Understanding

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The goals of this project are to: 1) Disseminate biology lessons that have been developed for prospective elementary school teachers. Each of the lessons includes a hands-on laboratory activity, a computer- based knowledge construction activity, and a Teachers Guide; 2) Develop and disseminate a multiple choice test for conceptual understanding of biology that will be useful for assessing learning among prospective elementary school teachers, other non-science majors, and biology majors so as to measure progress within a course and comparisons among courses; and 3) Develop, refine and test several new biology lessons designed to provide tools to elementary school teachers for teaching about evolution through in-class studies of population. The biology lessons are organized into three laboratory manuals: Molecular Biology; Organismal Biology; and 3) Population Biology. Each biology laboratory is accompanied by "knowledge construction exercises" supported by the SemNet software. These exercises provide guidelines for organizing knowledge in the form of active, working mental models and include a mix of individual and collaborative work. Laboratories will be made available in both printed and electronic form. Potential users include undergraduate instructors of prospective elementary teachers, undergraduate education majors, pre-service and practicing teachers, and other interested persons. The project will develop a two-tiered, multiple-choice test to measure conceptual understanding of biology. The first part of each question will assess student knowledge about a biological phenomenon such as ability to predict the outcome when a carrot is placed in saturated salt water. The second part of the question asks the student to explain the reasoning s/he used to make that prediction. The test will be developed using items that typically provide a brief description of a laboratory exercise with results (including graphic representation), and that as k students for interpretation. Open-ended responses obtained initially will be converted to multiple choice items in which distracters represent common misconceptions.