Collaborative Research: SPARST: Assessing the Process of Science

这个万年青州立大学和之间的合作项目正在创建，验证和传播科学过程和推理技能测试（SPARST），以评估学生对实验设计，数据分析，绘图和科学写作等技能的获得。SPARST旨在帮助生物学教师：a）评估即将入学的学生的技能水平，B）修改本科课程，以更好地解决技能教学沿着内容，c）创建一个共享技能教学实践和资源的全国网络，以及d）提高科学专业和非专业的一般科学素养。智力优势：由于在生物科学领域很少有这种类型的测试，SPARST将帮助教师了解他们在帮助学生发展这些技能方面的有效性，并帮助学生为进入研究生院或科学职业做好更好的准备。更广泛的影响：SPARST正在几个机构进行测试，并反复修订，以创建一个有效和可靠的测试。考试将是免费的，并可在网上作为多项选择和简答题。它的目的是在网上评分;回答简短的问题将被编译为便于评分和教师将提供一个有效的评分规则。实施SPARST的教师将获得一个免费的、描述性的学生能力诊断，该诊断将表明每个学生在每个科学过程技能领域的缩放问题子集上的表现如何，以及该教师的课程与类似机构的匿名子集的类似生物学课程相比如何。生物基础设施司和教育和人力资源局，本科教育司作为他们的愿景和变化的一部分，在本科生物教育的努力。

This collaborative project between Evergreen State College and is creating, validating, and disseminating a science process and reasoning skills test (SPARST) to assess students' acquisition of such skills as experimental design, data analysis, graphing, and scientific writing. SPARST is being designed to help biology faculty: a) gauge the skill level of incoming students, b) revise undergraduate curricula to better address the teaching of skills along with content, c) create a national network for sharing skill-teaching practices and resources, and d) improve the general science literacy of both science majors and non-majors. Intellectual Merit: Since there are few tests of this type available within the biological sciences, SPARST will help inform faculty of their effectiveness at helping students develop these skills and will help students become better prepared to enter graduate school or careers in science.Broader Impact: SPARST is being tested at several institutions and revised iteratively in order to create a valid and reliable test for distribution. The test will be free and available on-line as multiple choice and short-answer questions. It is designed to be graded online; responses to short answer questions will be compiled for ease of grading and faculty will be provided with a validated grading rubric. Faculty who implement SPARST will be provided with a free, descriptive diagnostic of their students' abilities that will indicate how well each student performed on the subset of scaled questions in each science process skill area and how the faculty's class compares to similar biology classes at an anonymous subset of similar institutions.This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education efforts.