Diagnostic Question Clusters: Development and Testing in Introductory Geology and Biology

诊断性评价是教学改进的基础。它提醒教师注意学生在学习特定概念时的困难。此外，真正的诊断评估产生的信息，为什么学生有困难，确定共同的概念障碍学生遇到的。这些信息可以用来指导教师改变他们的教学。该项目致力于实现两个主要目标。 一个是在本科学科中创建和使用诊断评估的通用系统的开发。二是在地质学和生物学中实现这一系统。 为了实现第一个目标，我们正在试行一个程序，以制定可用于任何领域的诊断问题，制定在线同行审查和发布诊断问题的协议。此外，我们正在对LON CAPA网络进行编程，以支持在线同行评审和诊断问题的发布以及学生对问题的回答数据的导出。(LON CAPA是计算机辅助个性化帮助的在线学习网络。这是密歇根州立大学开发的一个系统，用于提供其他机构可以免费获得的在线教学材料。） 最后，我们正在让其他机构的教师参与开发工作，使他们意识到诊断问题群，并帮助他们学习如何将诊断问题融入教学中。该项目通过制作针对地质学和生物学主题的诊断问题群来应对地质学和生物学诊断问题的缺乏。这些集群涵盖地质学的三个主题：系统，全球碳循环和水循环。 在生物学中，它们涵盖了两大主题，氮循环和碳循环。 这两个方面都涉及三个不同的层面：全球、宏观和微观。我们正在与生物学和地质学教师合作，教他们使用诊断问题作为教学的一部分，以了解学生遇到的概念障碍，并根据这些信息修改他们的教学。我们的最终目标是让所有领域的教师使用此程序来开发诊断问题并添加到池中。使用LON-CAPA的用户将得到新数据导出功能的帮助。LON-CAPA诊断问题库是一个永久性的地方，用于存储STEM教师可用的同行评审问题。

Diagnostic assessment is the foundation for instructional improvement. It alerts instructors to student difficulties in learning particular concepts. In addition, truly diagnostic assessment yields information as to why students have difficulties, identifying common conceptual barriers students encounter. This information can be used to guide instructors in making changes to their teaching. This project is working to achieve two major goals. One is the development of a generalized system for creating and using diagnostic assessment in an undergraduate discipline. The other is to implement this system in geology and biology. Towards the first goal we are piloting a procedure for developing diagnostic questions that can be used in any field, developing protocols for online peer review and publication of diagnostic questions. Further, we are programming the LON CAPA network to support the online peer review and publication of diagnostic questions and the export of data on students' responses to questions. (LON CAPA is the Learning Online Network with Computer Assisted Personalized Assistance. It is a system developed at Michigan State University for delivery of on-line instructional materials that is freely available to other institutions.) Finally, we are engaging faculty in other institutions in development work that will make them aware of the diagnostic question clusters and help them learn how to integrate diagnostic questions into their teaching.This project is responding to the dearth of diagnostic questions in geology and biology by producing clusters of diagnostic questions addressing topics in geology and biology. These clusters cover three topics in geology: systems, the global carbon cycle, and the water cycle. In biology they cover two large topics, nitrogen cycling and carbon cycling. Each of these two are being covered at three different levels: global, macro, and micro. We are working with biology and geology faculty, teaching them to use the diagnostic questions as part of their instruction in order to learn about the conceptual barriers encountered by their students and modify their instruction in light of this information. Our ultimate goal is to have faculty in all fields using this procedure for developing diagnostic questions and adding to the pool. Those who use LON-CAPA will be aided by the new data export features. The LON-CAPA library of diagnostic questions is a permanent place for storing peer-reviewed questions available to STEM teaching faculty.