Technology & Model-Based Conceptual Assessment: Research in Students' Applications of Models in Physics & Mathematics

为了改善学生和教师之间的沟通，特别是在大班，许多大学已经开始使用基于技术的响应系统。 这些系统使教师能够提出问题，并在几分钟内看到学生对这些问题的回答。另一种类似的方法是通过万维网快速提交、评分和返回作业。 这两种基于技术的系统都为教师提供了将每个学生的回答记录在数据库中的机会。 因此，教师可以比传统的家庭作业和测验更全面地跟踪学生的理解，并可以使用所得数据更深入地调查学生如何理解科学和数学概念。 除了看到每个学生目前的理解水平外，教师还可以通过在整个学习过程中比较学生的反应来了解学生如何改变他们的想法。 目前，这些反应的分析通常告诉教师，当学生获得正确的答案。 然而，对于没有正确回答的学生，目前的系统只不过表明学生没有正确应用科学理论和模型。 仍然缺少的是一种基于当代教育研究的分析工具，它可以提供关于学生对基本科学模型和理论的困难的可靠的定量信息，并可以跟踪学生对这些模型的理解在教学过程中如何变化。这些工具必须超越正确答案分析，并通过将学习理论纳入系统来分析学生的错误答案。 这个项目将开始与学生的概念学习过程的模型和现有的工作评估学生的概念理解的物理和数学。 然后，将对学生的科学模型和数学概念的应用进行研究，研究学生的思维和应用在教学过程中如何变化，以及如何将这些评估结果呈现给使用课堂实时响应或在线作业系统的教学人员。 通过构建一组问题，其中不正确的答案提供了对学生正在应用的科学和数学模型的见解，该项目的结果将导致更深入地了解学生学习物理和数学的能力以及学习最有效的环境。 分析还将提供洞察学生的能力，物理和数学课程之间的知识转移。该项目的主要目标是通过实时反馈衡量学生对基本概念的理解和这些概念的应用，跟踪教学期间这些理解和应用的变化，调查学生的概念理解如何取决于研究新概念的背景，创建可在许多教育环境中有效使用的分析工具，提供有关物理和数学之间知识转移的信息，并调查学生和教师如何与这种教学环境互动。达到这些目标的结果将是一个对科学和数学教学产生重大影响的系统。 在招生人数众多的班级里，这种影响尤其大，因为教师经常与学生保持距离，这些信息只有在学生参加考试后才能得到。对教师来说，特别重要的是了解学生何时开始改变他们的思想，但有时仍然回到教学前的科学或数学概念的应用--理解和缺乏理解的混合体。这种情况被认为是学习过程中重要的中间步骤。 通过了解这种混合的程度，教师可以根据学生目前对物理或数学的理解以及有助于学生思维发生根本变化的背景来计划学习过程的下一步。 因此，该项目将提供信息和工具，帮助科学和数学教师了解学生的现有知识，以及如何建设性地利用现有知识来提高学生的科学和数学思维能力。

To improve the communication between students and teachers, particularly in large classes, many universities have begun using technology-based response systems. These systems enable an instructor to pose questions and see, within a few minutes, the students' responses to those questions. Another similar approach is to assign homework that is submitted, graded and returned quickly via the World Wide Web. Both of these technology-based systems offer instructors the opportunity to record each student's responses in a database. Thus, the instructor can track students' understanding much more completely than with traditional homework and quizzes and can use the resulting data to investigate more deeply how students understand the scientific and mathematical concepts. In addition to seeing the present level of each students understanding the instructor can learn how the students change their thinking by making comparisons of responses throughout the learning process. A present, the analyses of these responses generally tell instructors when the students are obtaining the right answers. However, for students who are not answering correctly, the present systems do little more than indicate that the student is not applying the scientific theories and models correctly. Still missing is an analysis tool that is based on contemporary educational research and can provide robust quantitative information on the students' difficulties with the underlying scientific models and theories, and can track how the students' understandings of these models change during instruction. These tools must go beyond correct answer analysis and analyze students' incorrect answers by incorporating theories of learning into the systems. This project will begin with a model for students' conceptual learning processes and with existing work on assessing students' conceptual understanding in physics and mathematics. Then, research will be conducted on students' applications of scientific models and mathematical concepts, on how the students' thinking and applications change during instruction, and methods to present the results of these assessments to teaching faculty who are using in-class, real-time response or on-line homework systems. By constructing sets of questions in which incorrect answers provide insights into the scientific and mathematical models that students are applying, the project's results will lead to a deeper understanding of students' abilities to learn physics and mathematics and the contexts in which that learning occurs most effectively. The analysis will also provide insight into students' abilities to transfer knowledge between physics and mathematics courses. The major objectives of the project are to measure, with real-time feedback, students' understanding of fundamental concepts and the application of those concepts, trace changes in those understandings and applications during instruction, investigate how students' conceptual understanding depends on the context in which a new concept is studied, create analysis tools that can be used effectively in many educational environments, provide information about the transfer of knowledge between physics and mathematics, and investigate how students and instructors interact with this teaching environment.The result of reaching these goals will be a system that will have a large impact on the teaching of science and mathematics. The impact will be particularly great in large enrollment classes where instructors are often very detached from their students because, frequently, such information becomes available only after students take an exam. Of particular importance for the instructors is knowledge of when students have begun to change their thinking but still sometimes revert to pre-instructional applications of scientific or mathematical concepts-- a mixture of understanding and a lack of understanding. Such situations are recognized to be an important intermediate step in the learning process. By knowing the extent of this mixture the instructors can plan the next step in the learning process based on the students' present physical or mathematical understanding and the contexts which aid fundamental change in students' thinking. Thus, the project will provide both information and tools to help science and mathematics instructors learn about the present knowledge of their students and how to use that present knowledge constructively to improve the students' scientific and mathematical thinking skills.