Development of a Suite of Assessment Tools for Measuring Students' Experimental Modeling Skills

实验室课程提供了参与科学实践和核心思想的重要机会。实验室课程环境通常具有广泛的实验设备、灵活的课堂安排、较低的学生/教师比例以及协作工作机会。所有这些特点都有助于促进学生参与一系列科学实践(例如，提出问题、设计和进行实验、分析数据、开发和完善模型，以及向同行展示结果)。尽管许多实验室课程有丰富的机会和资源，但人们经常担心这些课程在发挥其潜力方面的有效性。最近的许多努力都试图改善学生在实验室课程中的学习体验。这个重要的项目将通过开发易于实施的评估来衡量学生在实验建模方面的能力，从而在全国范围内支持这些努力，实验建模是核心科学实践之一。评估工具将为教师和教育研究人员提供一种衡量教学影响的方法，从而允许在实验室课程中评估和改进不同的教育教学方法。本项目将开发、验证和支持对高级实验室课程中的实验建模技能进行易于实施和解释的评估。该项目将遵循经典测试理论的理论模型来指导两种耦合多反应评估工具的开发。这些仪器将测试学生构建、测试和改进高级实验系统和测量仪器模型的能力。这两项评估将集中在高级物理实验室的两个常见内容领域，模拟电子学和光学。该项目的产品不仅将为教师提供可操作的证据，帮助他们完善课程，而且还将让研究人员深入了解学生如何发展任何物理实验研究所需的建模技能。

Laboratory courses offer significant opportunities for engagement in the practices and core ideas of science. Laboratory course environments typically have extensive lab equipment, flexible classroom arrangements, low student/teacher ratios, and opportunities for collaborative work. All of these characteristics help promote students' engagement in a range of scientific practices (e.g., asking questions, designing and carrying out experiments, analyzing data, developing and refining models, and presenting results to peers). Despite the abundant opportunities and resources in many laboratory courses, concerns are frequently raised about how effective such courses are at fulfilling their potential. Many recent efforts have attempted to improve the learning experience for students in lab courses. This important project will support these efforts across the country by developing easy-to-implement assessments for measuring students' ability in modeling of experiments, one of the core scientific practices. The assessment instruments will give instructors and education researchers a way to measure the impact of instruction, and thus allow for evaluation and refinements of different educational pedagogies in lab courses. This project will develop, validate, and support an easily implementable and interpretable assessment for experimental modeling skills in upper-division lab courses. The project will follow the theoretical model of Classical Test Theory to guide the development of two coupled multiple-response assessment instruments. These instruments will measure students' ability to construct, test, and refine models of experimental systems and measurement apparatus at the upper-division level. The two assessments will focus on two common content areas in upper-division physics labs, analog electronics and optics. The products of the project will not only give instructors actionable evidence to help them refine their courses, but also give researchers insight into how students develop the modeling skills required for any experimental investigation in physics.