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

这个RCN-UBE项目旨在创建一个教育专家（研究学生如何学习）和科学家（积极的研究人员）的网络，以开发评估工具，直接衡量学生通过本科研究和课堂经验了解生物学实验设计的内容。合作，这两个小组将制定共同的学习标准，关于实验基础的概念和学生在推理实验和可视化数据时应该应用的表征的性质。 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，以揭示学生的困难领域，从而导致针对这些领域的新的教学和辅导方法。虽然越来越多的研究侧重于帮助学生破译实验研究过程中的一般，大多数评估工具只能间接衡量本科生从执行生物实验中学到了什么。该项目的智力价值在于，它解决了开发评估的需要，直接衡量学生对生物学研究的了解，以加强他们的研究技能。据设想，这些评估将有总结性和形成性的应用，作为促进学习实验研究能力的活动。该项目的更广泛的影响在于，参与该项目的教师来自不同职业水平的各种生物学分支学科和广泛的机构，为文科院校和硕士学位授予机构提供了一个机会，特别是为制定能够对学生产生积极影响的评估提供投入。作为一个关键成果，共同的标准和评估将在生物学的多个机构和学科中使用。该项目由生物科学理事会和本科教育部教育和人力资源理事会共同资助，以支持应对本科教育中的愿景和变革所带来的挑战：行动呼吁http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/

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/