Collaborative Research: Community Implementation: WIDER:Data Explorer and Assessment Resources for Faculty

来自堪萨斯州立大学和美国物理教师协会的一个合作PI团队正在创建一个国家模式，通过基于社区的网络资源来改善STEM高等教育，帮助物理教师通过将基于研究的教学方法和评估纳入课堂学习来改变他们的教学。认识到高等教育努力寻找评估和改进教学的方法，该项目采用了“自下而上”的方法，即基于学科的教师/研究人员开发、共享和汇总评估数据。研究性评价工具对物理教育改革产生了重大影响。他们提供了普遍和令人信服的衡量学生理解的方法，教师可以用这些方法来评估和改进他们的教学。这些工具可以改变教学实践，让教师了解自己的教学效果，从而提高教学效果。与此同时，它们的广泛使用可以通过提供大量数据来比较广泛的机构和学生群体的教学实践，从而改变研究人员对教育转型影响的理解。初步研究的结果表明，物理教师渴望利用他们作为科学家的认知资源来探索大数据，并将他们学生的评估结果与其他学生的评估结果进行比较。然而，初步研究也表明，许多使用这些工具的教师不知道如何解释结果或如何使用它们来改进教学。此外，由于只有个别教师知道当地的结果，研究人员无法访问这个数据池。由于这些原因，该项目正在将管理评估工具的私人实践转变为一种社区实践，即在大型教育工作者社区的背景下解释评估结果，在类似的环境中使用类似的实践，比较结果，并利用它们来改变单个教师和整个系的教学实践。PI团队正在扩展一个原型数据库，该数据库是以前NSF拨款（WIDER DUE-1256352）的一部分，它允许教师和研究人员以直观、互动和信息丰富的方式轻松上传、讨论和比较他们的数据。数据浏览器具有直观的用户界面、交互式一键式分析工具、可扩展的数据库和强大的数据安全性。该系统将被纳入PER用户指南，这是一个nsf资助的项目（NSDL du -0840853, TUES du -1245490），为物理教师提供关于研究型教学方法和评估的在线资源。这个项目的智力价值在于易于访问的用户界面，该界面旨在使教师能够参与学生的评估数据和国家数据集。教师可以为自己生成报告来解释他们自己的结果，以改善他们的教学，向同事解释他们正在做什么，并将其包括在教学档案和晋升和终身教职报告中，以证明他们的教学效率。该数据库全面投入使用后，预计将包括数百所学院和大学的结果。该项目的更广泛影响在于获得前所未有的评估数据，为物理教育研究人员和教师打开了一扇门，可以回答以前无法获得的有关学生学习的问题。

A collaborative PI team from Kansas State University and the American Association of Physics Teachers is creating a national model for improving STEM higher education through a community-based web resource to help physics faculty transform their teaching by incorporating teaching methods and assessments based on research into classroom learning. Recognizing that higher education struggles to find ways to evaluate and improve instruction, the project is using a "bottom-up" approach in which discipline-based teachers/researchers develop, share, and aggregate assessment data.Research-based assessment instruments have had a major impact on physics education reform. They provide universal and convincing measures of student understanding that instructors can use to assess and improve their teaching. These instruments can transform teaching practice by informing instructors about their teaching efficacy so that they can improve it. At the same time, their widespread use can transform researchers' understanding of the impact of educational transformation by providing large quantities of data that compare teaching practices across a broad range of institutions and student populations.The results of preliminary studies suggest that physics faculty members are eager to use their cognitive resources as scientists to explore big data and compare their students' assessment results to those of other students like their own. However, the preliminary studies also suggest that many instructors who use these instruments do not know how to interpret the results or how to use them to improve their teaching. Further, because local results are known only to individual instructors, researchers do not have access to this pool of data. For these reasons, the project is turning the private practice of administering assessment instruments into a community practice of interpreting assessment results in the context of a large community of educators using similar practices in similar settings, comparing results, and using them to transform teaching practices both for individual faculty members and for departments as a whole. The PI team is expanding a prototype database developed as part of a previous NSF grant (WIDER DUE-1256352) into a community forum and data explorer that allow instructors and researchers to easily upload, discuss, and compare their data in an intuitive, interactive, and informative way. The data explorer features an intuitive user interface inviting exploration and discovery, interactive one-click analysis tools, a scalable database, and robust data security. This system will be incorporated into the PER User's Guide, an NSF-funded (NSDL DUE-0840853, TUES DUE-1245490) project that provides online resources for physics faculty about research-based teaching methods and assessments.The intellectual merit of this project resides in the easily accessible user interface that is designed to enable faculty members to engage with their students' assessment data and the national dataset. Instructors can generate reports for themselves to interpret their own results in order to improve their teaching, to explain what they are doing to colleagues, and to include in teaching portfolios and promotion and tenure reports that demonstrate their teaching efficacy. When fully operational, the database is expected to include results from hundreds of colleges and universities.The Broader Impacts of the project lie in the access to an unprecedented amount of assessment data that opens the doors for physics education researchers and faculty to answer questions about students' learning that were previously inaccessible.