CAREER: A Model for Achieving Flexible and Scalable Conceptual Assessment – A Prototype in Undergraduate Quantum Mechanics

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。该项目旨在通过创建一个灵活而强大的工具来衡量学生在本科量子力学课程中的学习情况，从而为国家利益服务。这种测量工具很重要，因为量子力学在科学和工业中的应用代表了该国日益增长的潜力和优先领域。随着量子计算机等技术正在成为现实，STEM教育社区提供有效的教育计划，培养能够在这些尖端行业工作的量子知识劳动力至关重要。有一个工具，可以衡量学生的量子力学概念的学习是确保这些计划是有效地实现他们的目标至关重要的一部分。该项目还旨在提供比较不同量子教育课程和计划的有效性的能力，以确定有效和创新的教学策略和方法。此外，这种新的测量工具旨在提供一种机制，通过这种机制，我们可以识别量子教育中不同学生群体之间的差异表现。成绩上的差异往往反映了教育制度中的不公平，在这种制度中，某些群体得到的支助比其他群体好。识别这些不平等是改变系统的第一步，以确保所有学生，无论他们的身份或背景如何，都可以成功，从而支持在STEM课程和职业中保留和支持多样化学生的目标。为了实现上述目标，本项目旨在通过开发一个灵活覆盖的原型评估，建立和实施一个新的模型，用于设计和结构的物理教育研究（PER）的评估。这项工作是及时的，因为它解决了越来越多的需要评估，更好地支持社会的教育目标，和评估的灵活性将允许其广泛采用，并促进学生学习的积极影响，在更广泛的规模比以前已经实现。拟议的原型评估旨在针对本科量子力学（QM）。QM是测试这种新评估模型的理想内容领域，因为它是本科物理课程的基础组成部分，但也具有不同机构所涵盖内容的显著差异。拟议的工具-量子物理评估（QuPA）-将由现有静态QM评估的问题组成，以及针对现有评估尚未捕获的QM重要主题领域（如量子信息）开发的新项目。为了适应灵活的内容覆盖范围并确保QuPA项目的公正性，项目反应理论（IRT）将指导QuPA的验证。使用IRT来开发QuPA等评估，虽然在PER中是新颖的，但却是用于多个其他领域的最先进方法。从QuPA的结果也将进行分析，以确定课程的方法，导致更高的学生表现相对于其他方法。QuPA的开发和验证的详细文档和传播到多个STEM学科将提供一个模型，允许其他人在其他内容领域的未来评估开发中复制这一过程。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This project aims to serve the national interest by creating a flexible and robust tool to measure student learning in undergraduate quantum mechanics courses. Such a measurement tool is important because applications of quantum mechanics within science and industry represent a growing area of potential and priority for the country. As technologies such as quantum computers are well on their way to being a reality, it will be critical that the STEM education community provides effective educational programs the produce a quantum-literate workforce that can work in these cutting-edge industries. Having a tool that can measure students’ learning of quantum mechanics concepts is a vitally important part of ensuring that these programs are effective at achieving their goals. This project also aims to provide the ability to compare the effectiveness of different quantum education courses and programs to identify efficient and innovative instructional strategies and approaches. Additionally, this new measurement tool seeks to provide a mechanism by which we can identify differential performance between different groups of students within quantum education. Differences in performance are often reflective of inequities in the educational system in which some groups are better supported than others. Identifying these inequities is the first step to changing the system to ensure that all students, regardless of their identities or backgrounds can be successful, thus supporting the goal of retaining and supporting a diverse population of students in STEM programs and careers. To accomplish the goals above, this project intends to establish and implement a new model for the design and structure of assessments in Physics Education Research (PER) through the development of a flexible coverage prototype assessment. This work is timely in that it addresses a growing need for assessments that better support the educational goals of the community, and the flexible nature of the assessment will allow for its broad adoption and facilitate positive impact on student learning on a broader scale than has previously been achieved. The proposed prototype assessment seeks to target undergraduate quantum mechanics (QM). QM represents an ideal content area to test this new assessment model because it is a foundational component of undergraduate physics programs, but also features significant variation in the content covered at different institutions. The proposed instrument - the Quantum Physics Assessment (QuPA) - will be composed of questions from existing, static QM assessments, as well as new items developed to target important topical areas of QM not already captured by the existing assessments such as quantum information. To accommodate flexible content coverage and ensure the QuPA items are unbiased, Item Response Theory (IRT) will guide the validation of the QuPA. The use of IRT to develop assessments like the QuPA, while novel in PER, is a state-of-the-art approach used in multiple other fields. Results from the QuPA will also be analyzed to identify curricular approaches which result in higher student performance relative to other approaches. Detailed documentation and dissemination of the development and validation of the QuPA to multiple STEM disciplines will provide a model allowing others to replicate this process in the development of future assessments for other content areas.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.