Collaborative Research: A Model for Data-driven Reform in Chemistry Education

该项目利用了几位合作者的成果，他们在化学学习和认知评估工具的开发和验证方面进行了研究。该项目旨在通过开发、实施和研究多种衡量学生学习的工具来增加这些工具的效力和影响。该项目利用合作者的集体专业知识来构建一套强大的交叉验证评估工具，并确定这些项目如何能够最好地为化学教师提供有关其教学有效性的信息。通过提高教育工作者根据可靠数据做出教学选择的能力，从经过验证的测量学习的工具，本科化学教学的大规模变革可以改变STEM学科学生的教育体验。这个项目的智力价值体现在两个方面。首先，化学新评价工具的评价研究与验证不仅为教学提供了重要数据，而且为构建化学认知成长基本过程的知识库提供了重要数据。为了了解知识获取，必须设计、开发和实施更好的测量技术。其次，使用评估工具来确定教学方法的有效性为发现提供了丰富的机会。在使用新教学方法的情况下，在衡量学习方面的创新能够推动基于数据而不是轶事的决策，并增强了教学中有效方法的学术研究。本项目中使用的多仪器方法处于化学教育测量的前沿，因此开启了与教学方法相关的新型学术研究的可能性。这项工作的更广泛影响在很大程度上与它改善化学评估实践的潜力有关。美国化学会考试协会和美国国家科学数字图书馆的ChemEd DL都参与了这个项目，并拥有庞大的用户社区，范围遍及全国，因此基于该项目发现的评估改进有望转化为化学领域的广泛应用。由于化学是一个认知领域，具有用于理解许多现象的多种表征，因此该领域评估工具的改进能够为其他STEM领域的类似工具提供信息，从而将该项目的潜在影响扩大到化学之外。这个项目是数据驱动的，因此涉及到数据的收集，这些数据可以用于开发和改进严格的认知模型。

Chemistry (12)This project leverages results from several collaborators who have conducted research in the development and validation of instruments for assessing learning and cognition in chemistry. The project seeks to multiply both the efficacy and impact of these instruments by developing, implementing, and studying multiple instrument measures of student learning. The project uses the collective expertise of the collaborators to build a robust suite of cross-validated assessment instruments and to determine how these items can best provide information to chemistry instructors on the effectiveness of their teaching. By enhancing the ability for educators to make teaching choices based on sound data, from validated instruments for measuring learning, large scale change in the teaching of undergraduate chemistry can transform the educational experience of students in STEM disciplines. The intellectual merit of this project lies along two vectors. First, assessment research and validation of new assessment instruments in chemistry provides important data not only from the perspective of teaching, but also in terms of building the knowledge base of the fundamental processes of cognitive growth in chemistry. In order to learn about knowledge acquisition, better measurement technology must be devised, developed and implemented. Second, using assessment instruments to ascertain the effectiveness of teaching methods provides an area rich in opportunities for discovery. Innovation in the measurement of learning in situations where new teaching methods are used is capable of driving decisions based on data rather than anecdotes and enhances the scholarship of what works in teaching. The multiple-instrument methods used in this project are at the cutting edge of educational measurement in chemistry and therefore open the possibility of novel scholarship related to teaching methodology The broader impacts of this work are tied largely to its potential for improving assessment practice within chemistry. Both the Exams Institute of the American Chemical Society and the ChemEd DL of the National Science Digital Library are involved in this project and have large communities of users, national in scope, so improvements made in assessment based on the findings of this project are expected to translate to widespread usage within chemistry. Because chemistry is a cognitive domain with multiple representations used to understand many phenomena, the improvements of assessment instruments in this field are capable of informing similar instruments in other STEM fields, thus broadening the potential impact of this project beyond chemistry. This project is data-driven, and therefore involves the collection of data that can be useful in developing and improving rigorous models of cognition.