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Randy
To help keep this page from getting too long and out of hand, I have created a handful of sub-pages where conversations about particular topics can occur.
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From Randy Phillis
I have a suggestion that may refocus the efforts to find the "right" topic areas. What if we created a set of problems that were presented in the case study format (a la Ethel and Margaret), and then asked specific questions about the case that required students to respond from both their content knowledge, and their conceptual understanding of the issues in the case? As we learned from the West Nile Virus story presented by Ethel and Margaret, these cases are very rich, and provide opportunities to explore many issues that integrate molecular biology, cell biology, physiology, genetics, evolution and ecology. If we could create a set of a dozen cases, with corresponding questions that asked students to reply based on their understanding of the sub-disciplines, we could cover plenty of waterfront. We could also focus the design of questions on what exactly we should reasonably expect students to be able to figure out from a given set of data (contained in the case). .... I have a specific example or two in the works I'll post soon.....
Randy
From Bill Wischusen
Hi to All,
This is just a short reply to the extended discussion so far. I think the idea of identifying a few concepts that we want student to know and what we want students to be able to do with these concepts is the key. Ideally we might be able to identify one content area for each semester of the course. If this is too much then I would start with a first semester content area.
I would like to propose a couple of content areas: First Semester: Cell Cycle (John mentioned this), Osmosis, or Transcription/Translation
Second Semester Population Growth (perhaps, just logistic growth), or Immune Response/Immunity
From Ruth Buskirk:
1. Bioliteracy and and Teaching Efficacy: What biologists can learn from physicists.
this summarizes the Physics Force Inventory test and its impact on curricula, also has suggestions about applying it in cell biology
http://www.cellbioed.org/articles/vol2no3/article.cfm?articleID=67
2. Project 2061's benchmarks
http://www.project2061.org/tools/benchol/bolintro.htm
3. conference proceedings: Undergraduate Education in the Life Sciences: Every Student an Investigator? relevant about the way biology students learn
http://www.sunysb.edu/Reinventioncenter/conference/Life%20Sciences/LifeScienceSession.htm
4. http://bioliteracy.net/ Has anyone used this? supposedly an inventory of questions about different biology concepts.
two relevant quotes from reference 1
What this literature does not provide us with are (1) a comprehensive and coherent concept base for biological science and (2) adequately validated concept inventories that cover these concepts. Existing instruments, such as the recently released Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (Anderson et al., 2002), provide test items and distracters for a topic not explicitly covered in our program. Others, such as the Diffusion and Osmosis Diagnostic Test (Odom and Barrow, 1995), have been shown to have questionable reliability (see Griffard and Wandersee, 2001), at least in terms of their ability to identify students' misconceptions accurately based on their naive understanding of concepts rather than their factual and vernacular misconceptions.
Recently, coauthor Michael Zeilik spoke with biologists at professional meetings about developing a BCI. The most common response was that "we should have one," followed by "it can't be done" because of a lack of consensus about the conceptual content and level of "Biology 101." T
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From John Merrill:
Thanks for getting this started Ruth. I want to try to clarify what I attempted to say in the Saturday discussion session on this topic. I think that a clear agreement on the purpose for an "inventory" will help us focus, and may help us achieve something useful without it being overwhelmingly difficult. so...
Preface: Each of us has ideas about steps we can take to improve teaching and learning in our classrooms, labs, online, etc. Ideally, we will always assess the benefits of these improvements with regard to the learning of our students. Often we assess our success by comparing exam scores or other measures that we may have from previous offerings of the same course, or maybe even concurrent offerings. What we are generally UNABLE to do is compare to each other, regardless of what particular innovation we may be trying.
Proposal: A standard assessment tool (the "inventory"), comprised of an agreed-upon set of learning assessments (exam questions), could provide the ability to compare success of our respective innovations. Even a relatively small set of standard exam questions, limited to one or two "typical" concept areas, could be used to analyze our teaching and learning innovations. (Now here is what I think is an important point:) It is NOT necessary for such a tool to be a complete assessment of any particular learning area, only that each question be considered by us to be a valid assessment, and that there be enough such questions to get us an answer to the question "did my innovation improve the learning of my students". What we would like is a tool that allows us to compare across instructors, programs, institutions, and innovations by employing the same assessment instrument. A key assumption here must be that if we demonstrate improved learning in one of our assessment topics by whatever the innovation, that similar improvements should be predictable in other topic areas. Thus, for example, I'd argue against Mendelian genetics as one of the topic areas, because it has a significant quantitative component while most of our major topic areas do not (at least as currently taught). So, this is a different goal from what may be expressed by others:
1. (others) Develop a comprehensive standard assessment tool to assess student learning in biology. 2. (us) Develop a limited standard assessment tool so we can assess the effectiveness of teaching and learning innovations.
These are fundamentally different goals, and I believe that ours is almost infinitely more tractable. So, for example, we might need 5 or 10 good questions on the topic of, say, the cell cycle, but we would not need a comprehensive set of assessments that cover all of our learning objectives for the cell cycle. As laudable as is the first goal, I would still be thrilled to achieve the second.
John
*** merrill3@msu.edu *** John Merrill, Director Biological Sciences Program 100 North Kedzie Lab Michigan State University East Lansing MI 48824 USA
From Steve Rissing:
Hey Folks:
Good to meet many new friends and see old friends all interested in effective teaching of biology at the college level last weekend.
I'm somewhat familiar with the original Physics Force Concept Inventory, having worked for a number of years with Dave Hestenes, its creator, at Arizona State University. It derives its power from asking how far and in how many areas have students moved away from universal and identifiable misconceptions in physics. Two aspects in particular make it effective: 1.) near unaminity among physics educators as to the foundational role in their field occupied by the forces assessed (e.g. thermodynamics) and 2.) the pervasiveness of the misconceptions in these foundational areas and revealed by the inventory.
The physics FCI doesn't ask was I effective with this particular teaching method, change, etc.? Rather it asks the subtlely different question of did a particular class, approach, etc. help students discover and correct their specific misconceptions? Hestenes and his colleagues have used the FCI to demonstrate to doubters among their colleagues that inquiry-based, hands-on learning results in movement in a student's score on the FCI and little else does (e.g. standard lectures) even though such standard lecture approaches may trigger imcreases in the value of other assessments (e.g. course grade, physics appreciation scores, etc.). A good summary of the FCI is available at http://www.rose-hulman.edu/irpa/old/ASSESSMENT/references/tests/force_concept_test.html
If we want to attempt the same approach in biology, then we need to identify areas where students have common misconceptions. Sorry, John, but the cell cycle doesn't score well there. Basic Mendelian genetics does. Evolution, of course, is the mother-load on misconceptions in biology. But the misconceptions associated with evolution do not tend to be the normal old misconception understood by the education folks, e.g. misconceptions about thermodynamics. Evolution misconceptions tend to be intentional; the holder of them is well aware of their existence and their disagreement with current biological theory. Explain, effectively, to a student that the potential energy in a barrel of oil wasn't distroyed upon oxidation, and they will say "Oh!." Tell them that the oil was 200,000,000 years old, and if they are so inclined they will tell you where to go and how to get there.
I would be very interested in pursuing this with any one in the group. We had some of the largest and most dynamic college biology teaching programs present at the conference last weekend. I--and I suspect maybe some others--have access to funding to help pull us together if that becomes appropriate at some point. Like Ruth I found mention to the Bioliteracy site maintained by people at U Colorado @ Boulder; I don't recognize their names.
Steve
rissing.2@osu.edu 614-688-4989
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From Mitch Price (mdp8@psu.edu, 814-865-7941)
Hi All,
I've been trying to absorb the threads of discussion from yesterday and am very interested in what has been said. I will preface by saying that I am very encouraged to see this sort of momentum come out of the meeting last weekend.
After looking at the work going on with the folks at U Colorado I think that we have to be careful not to reinvent the wheel with our initiative. One of the things that I didn't see in their material was a plan to implement and/or test this inventory. Should we try to focus on this aspect of the inventory as "our domain" and possibly initiate a collaboration with the Colorado folks with respect to the question development (I'm sure they would be thrilled to have an instant network of top intro bio programs).
Another issue that I wanted to mention with regard to the question format. I know we discussed a range of question types including traditional multiple choice questions, to passage questions. Another possibility that might be worth investigating for this is using confidence based testing. Another group in Colorado (forgive me but I can't remember their names...) have been using a model from executive training courses to score not only student responses, but also their confidence in their answers. I don't know if we could use their system per se (it seems to be ensconced in a fairly rigid software infrastructure) or adapt this concept in a different way.
I've also pasted this text into the CourseWiki that Randy set up so forgive the redundant email...
Mitch
John M: I'm moving a copy of Rich Showman's post to this page, rather than the sample question page, as I think it fits here.
From Rich Showman:
I'd like to make a modest proposal vis-a-vis our "Concepts Inventory" efforts. As I have read throught the various letters and ideas I find myself agreeing in principle with just about everyone but have the sense that we are approaching multiple problems under the guise of a single "topic." It is very clear that in Dr. Panglos' "best of all possible worlds" our inventory would serve a multitude of purposes, as does the Force Concept Inventory for Physics. This may, however, be the precise reason that earlier attempts to do the same for Biology have not reached fruition. I tend to agree with the idea that, for starting purposes we need to define the most simple, basic goal....namely a way to assess ourselves in order to see how well new teaching approaches/technology work. If we can get this part in place, then we would have a good framework for the next level of thinking (my apologies to Bertie Russell).
The pragmatic driving force behind this is the deadline of the 15th and the need to establish very quickly some structural organization to our rapidly expanding biological quasar. We need a couple of things decided by not later then Monday or Tuesday:
1. A PI who is willing to pull all the parts together, probably at the last minute.
2. At least one Co-PI who is willing to assume editing/reviewing, primarily for seeing the inconsistencies everyone of us never sees until after we submit our proposals! (I'd suggest however we all be Co-PI's on the formal proposal.)
3. An agreement on the tight focused topic, with "future goals" to be added at the end.
4. A subdivision of areas assigned to individuals with expertise, (and perhaps with at least one "dunderhead" to keep the others in line?)
I am sure there are other "organizational steps" I am leaving out, but this is a starting point. Someone want to volunteer/nominate? How about Friday 5PM, Eastern daylight time for nominations (including self-nominations!). I'll be happy to collect, collate and resend the "ballot" out at 5:30 the same day so we can all vote NLT Monday.
Likewise, if the idea of "working" teams agrees with the majority of us, why not also send in an "area" and your willingness to be part of that proposed working group. I'll collate that too and send it off to the lucky winner who can then chose his/her working Co-PI and consolidate/setup the teams, at least for the purposes of the grant application.
. Rich Showman
PS I have seen more well thought out, integrated thinking in one week then I usually see is a year of faculty meetings! Maybe we should just form our own university of Biological Sciences!
Rich
From John M.
This is the text of my email Fri, 4/9/04 9:20am
I wholeheartedly support Rich's suggestion. I wish to participate in a proposal with this limited, tightly focused, objective, but am less interested in a bigger focus (at least in the context of this mini-proposal). The RFP rules were that there had to be at least 2 co-PI's from different institutions, which is certainly not a problem on this topic! I throw my hat in as one of the possible PI's, or the administering PI, as we'll need somebody to actually manage the budget, etc.
To advance in another area: I propose we spend the funds on a hard-charging weekend workshop where we get as many of us together as the budget allows, and hammer out 5-20 preliminary inventory questions on each of 2 topics, one suited to a typical "cells and molecules" course, and one suited to a typical "evolution, ecology, and diversity" course. This would be kind of modeled on the all-night labor negotiations, so we are forced to get it done, and not get mired down in peripheral debate. We'd plan this workshop for as soon as possible after grant award (maybe late May after most of our semesters are over?) so that some of us might even try them in summer sessions if we teach them, but for sure by Fall sessions. Basically, all the $5k would be for this one workshop. The amount might limit us to 10 participants with a limit of $500 in air, lodging and meals per person. One or two local hosts might spend less, so maybe we could afford 12? Subsequent usage and analysis would be up to each of us in our normal activities, and a report would have to be generated by electronic means.
I tentatively offer to host this workshop at Michigan State, with the sessions to be held in our new state-of-the-art Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building. I'm investigating dormitory lodging to reduce costs.
John
This is text of my email (Buskirk April 11) and I'm also pasting in email comments I'm citing from Jean H and Pat M.
Hi - this conversation is definitely rolling (lurching? steaming?) in a direction that I feel is productive and quite impressive. I agree with getting together for a weekend think tank, but scheduling will be a bear. Thanks, John, for organizing and trying to set a date.
A really important goal is to have students make CONNECTIONS between different aspects of biology and to see that many of the same concepts and principles apply in cell biology, gene control, population biology, and organismal physiology, a la Jean H's suggestion. And, we should think about integrating biology concepts with chemistry and physics a la Bio 2010. So, I agree that we should go beyond molecular biology. Perhaps, to add some focus, we could choose one module - e.g., cell biology, molecular biology, or whatever - to do in depth but also include examples in a breadth of biology subjects. People can develop items further in those other areas once the "shining" example module and suggestions in other field are agreed upon.
Ruth _
copy from previous email Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:23:43 -0500 From: Jean Heitz <jgheitz@wisc.edu>
Hi -
I looked at the BCL document at http://bioliteracy.net/Construction.htm
I don't disagree with this list of information that they feel is important. On the other hand, my idea is to provide a more integrated approach that looks first at major unifying concepts/principles (or whatever you want to call them). These would be carried or threaded through the study of all the major topics in biology.
Let me know what you think, Jean _
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 22:04:07 -0400
From: "Pat Marsteller" <pmars@LearnLink.Emory.Edu>
Please do not only concentrate on molecular biology, my friends
More tomorrow...but there is an absence on organismal, population and
evolutionary approaches that I find appalling.
We also need a focus on process questions. Biology constantly changes...(evolves)..perhaps even revolutions.... we can NOT teach only one level of analysis
Pat Marsteller, PhD, Director Emory College Center for Science Education _
Last edited on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 10:36:32 am.
  
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