Needs Assessment of Chemistry Instructors for Educational Measurement Professional Development Materials

化学（12）本项目在大学水平的化学教育者群体中进行需求分析，以确定该群体对教育测量和评估的理解水平。预期研究结果将阐明这一领域今后专业发展活动的富有成效的途径。这项分析分两个阶段进行。在第一阶段，焦点小组一级的工作允许为更大规模的调查工作设定参数，从而允许为第二阶段开发更广泛的调查工具。对于第二阶段，实地调查用于进行需求分析，以测量社区内与评估相关的当前教育实践与对化学评估的更彻底理解之间的差距。这一阶段使用随机分层的教师样本，根据机构类型和多年的化学教学经验。通过这一策略，能够确定影响人们如何学习教育工具的因素。这个项目的智力价值体现在三个方面。首先，与焦点小组一起进行的研究提供了对当前知识与有关评估方法的某些可定义的理想知识状态之间差距的定性描述。本研究可以确定进行更大规模调查工作的方法，并对教师教育测量知识的性质设定初步的期望水平。第二，大规模实地调查需要开发工具，以便在目标受众可能不熟悉材料的用途，甚至不熟悉常用词汇的情况下评估需求。最后，对大规模需求评估调查的分析有望提供化学教育界在评估方法和局限性方面的理解的快照。对于一个大的教育界来说，这个快照可以作为一个原型，用来理解其他科学学科和其他层次化学教育中相关社区的专业发展需求。这项工作的广泛影响主要来自项目的规模和所评估需求的性质。大学水平的教学主要由教师进行，他们在教育主题（包括评估）方面几乎没有接受过正式培训。化学在这方面代表了一个典型的社区，因此本研究的结果可能提供(a)理解其他科学领域专业发展需求的模型；(b)设计适当的专业发展材料和对其有效性进行有意义的评估的假设；(c)了解相关STEM领域的研究人员如何进行类似的需求评估。预计将确定可能影响教师对教育工具（在本例中用于评估）的认识的广泛因素。了解这些因素可能对其他人在开发评估与任何教育方法有关的化学家和其他科学家的需求的模板时很有用。

Chemistry (12)This project is carrying out a needs analysis within the community of chemical educators at the college level in order to identify the level of understanding of educational measurement and assessment by this community. The results are expected to elucidate fruitful avenues for future professional development activities within this field. The analysis is being carried out in two stages. In the first stage, focus group level work allows the setting of parameters for larger scale survey work and thus allows for the development of broader survey tools for the second phase. For this second phase a field survey is used to conduct a needs analysis that measures the gap within the community between current educational practices related to assessment and a more thorough understanding of assessment within chemistry. This phase utilizes random stratified samples of instructors in terms of both institutional type and years of experience teaching chemistry. With this strategy, factors that influence how people learn about educational tools are able to be identified.The intellectual merit of this project lies along three vectors. First, research to be done with focus groups provides a qualitative-level description of the gap between current knowledge and some definable ideal state of knowledge about assessment methodology. This research can identify ways that larger scale survey work can be conducted and sets an initial level of expectation about the nature of faculty knowledge of educational measurement. Second, the large scale field survey requires the development of tools that allow the assessment of needs when the target audience is potentially unfamiliar with not only the utility of the material but even the vocabulary commonly used. Finally, the analysis of the large-scale needs assessment survey is expected to provide a snapshot of where the chemistry education community is in terms of understanding of assessment methodologies and limitations. This snapshot, for a large educational community, can serve as a prototype for understanding the professional development needs of related communities - in other scientific disciplines and at other levels of chemistry education.The broader impact of this work derives primarily from the scale of the project and the nature of the needs being assessed. College-level instruction is largely carried out by faculty with little formal training in educational topics, including assessment. Chemistry represents a typical community in this respect, so results from this study are likely to provide (a) models for understanding professional development needs in other science fields; (b) hypotheses for designing appropriate professional development materials and conducting meaningful assessment of their efficacy and; (c) insight into how researchers in related STEM fields may conduct similar needs assessments. A broad spectrum of factors that potentially influence faculty awareness of educational tools (in this case for assessment) is anticipated to be identified. Knowing these factors is likely to be useful to others in developing templates for assessing needs of chemists and other scientists related to any educational methodology.