RCN-UBE: Assessment of Competence in Experimental Design in Biology (ACED-Bio) Network

这一RCN-UBE项目旨在建立一个由教育专家(研究学生如何学习)和科学家(他们是积极的研究人员)组成的网络，以开发评估工具，直接衡量学生通过本科生研究和课堂经验学习到的生物学实验设计知识。通过合作，这两个小组将就实验背后的概念和学生在推理实验和可视化数据时应应用的表征的性质制定共同的学习标准。他们还将评估现有的评估，并根据标准创建和验证新的评估，以揭示学生困难的领域，从而产生针对这些领域的新的教学和指导方法。虽然越来越多的研究侧重于帮助学生破译总体上的实验研究过程，但大多数评估工具只间接衡量本科生从进行生物实验中学到了什么。这个项目的智力价值在于，它解决了开发评估的需要，这些评估直接衡量学生在生物学研究中学到了什么，以加强他们的研究技能。预计这些评估将具有终结性和形成性应用，作为促进学习实验研究能力的活动。该项目的更广泛影响在于，参与该项目的教师来自不同职业水平和广泛的机构，为文科学院和授予硕士学位的机构提供了一个机会，为制定能够对其学生产生积极影响的评估提供意见。作为一项关键成果，统一的标准和评估将在多个生物学机构和学科中使用。该项目由生物科学局和本科教育司教育和人力资源局联合资助，以支持应对《展望与改变本科教育：行动呼吁》中提出的挑战的努力

This RCN-UBE project seeks to create a network of educational specialists (who study how students learn) and scientists (who are active researchers) to develop assessment tools that directly measure what students learn about experimental design in biology through undergraduate research and classroom experiences. Collaboratively, these two groups will develop common learning standards about the concepts underlying an experiment and the nature of representations students should apply in reasoning about experiments and visualizing data. They also will evaluate existing assessments and create and validate new assessments based on the standards to reveal areas of student difficulties, leading to new instructional and mentoring approaches targeting those areas.While an increasing number of studies focus on helping students decipher the experimental research process in general, most assessment tools only indirectly measure what undergraduates learn from performing biology experiments. The intellectual merit of this project is that it addresses the need to develop assessments that directly measure what students learn about biology research to strengthen their research skills. It is envisaged that these assessments will have both summative and formative applications as activities for promoting learning about experimental research competencies.The broader impacts of the project lie in the fact that faculty involved in the project come from a variety of biology sub-disciplines at different career levels and from a wide range of institutions, providing an opportunity for liberal arts colleges and master's-degree-granting institutions, in particular, to provide input to the development of assessments that can positively impact their students. As a key outcome, the common standards and assessments will be used across multiple institutions and disciplines of biology.This project is funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate of Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education in support of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education: A Call to Action http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/