Analyzing Constructed Responses: Using Linguistic Software to Understand Students' Conceptions in Science

评估/研究（91）生物科学（61）地质学（42）该项目正在开发一种有效的方法，以揭示学生在科学入门课程中的概念理解和概念障碍。 第一步是学生的反应。 这些要求学生解释科学现象，从而有很好的潜力，揭示学生的概念障碍。由于资源的限制，学生评估往往是使用多项选择项目，而不是构建的反应项目。在大规模招生的课程中，评估构建反应的成本和物流是令人望而却步的，这是大型机构中最典型的入门科学课程。本项目正在研究多种方法，以应用计算机语言分析的进步，以减少评估构建反应评估的时间和成本。 这些多种方法正被用来从学生的回答中提取概念类别，并利用这些数据建立学生在生物学和地质学学科中应用这些概念的统计模型。 这些数据来自于大规模招生的学生，每学期都有几百名学生入学的本科入门课程。智力价值：这些模型可能有助于提高教育工作者对学生概念障碍的理解，并作为对其他寻求诊断学生概念障碍的研究的检查。该项目小组是一个跨学科小组，具有生物学，地质学，科学教育，教师教育，统计学和教学技术方面的专业知识，并具有合作经验。更广泛的影响：改变教学，把重点放在学生的学习，而不是教学有可能产生巨大的影响。使用揭示学生概念障碍的评估将有助于教师通过解决导致STEM学科减员的概念困难来改善教学。在这个项目完成后，跨学科的教师将有机会获得一个新的工具来评估论文的反应，即使在大招生课程。

Assessment/Research (91)Biological Sciences (61)Geology (42)This project is developing an efficient means for revealing students' conceptual understanding and conceptual barriers in introductory science courses. The starting point is student constructed responses. These require students to explain scientific phenomena and thus have good potential to reveal student conceptual barriers. Because of resource limitations, student assessment is often undertaken using multiple choice items rather than constructed response items. The costs and logistics of evaluating constructed responses are prohibitive in large enrollment courses that are typical of most introductory science courses in large institutions.This project is investigating multiple approaches to applying advances in computerized linguistic analysis in order to reduce the time and cost of evaluating constructed response assessments. These multiple approaches are being used to extract conceptual categories from student responses and using these data to build statistical models of students' application of those concepts in the disciplines of biology and geology. The data are being derived from students in large enrollment, introductory undergraduate courses, each with an enrollment of several hundred students per semester.Intellectual Merit: These models are likely to be useful for improving educators' understanding of student conceptual barriers and as a check on other research seeking to diagnose student conceptual barriers. The project team is an interdisciplinary group with expertise in biology, geology, science education, teacher education, statistics, and instructional technology, and has experience in working together. Broader Impacts: Changes in instruction to focus on student learning rather than on teaching has the potential for large impact. Using assessments that reveal students' conceptual barriers will help instructors to improve teaching by addressing the conceptual difficulties that contribute to attrition in STEM disciplines. At the completion of this project, instructors across the scientific disciplines will have access to a new tool for assessing essay responses, even in large enrollment courses.