| Assessment Tools for Student Performance
Because our experiments focus on the processes of critical
thinking and problem solving, assessment of student research
projects cannot be based on how closely the student comes
to a known answer. It is necessary to develop appropriate
assessment techniques for student learning in these new courses.
Research is an applied form of inquiry and “Teaching
through inquiry is distinguished by its emphasis on a questioning
attitude, gathering data, reasoning from evidence, and communicating
explanations that can be justified by the available data”.
A variety of appropriate assessments that address these emphases
will be integrated into the project. The National Science
Education Standards identify two factors characteristic of
appropriate assessments:
• The assessments are authentic, i.e. they approximate
the learning situation. For example, an authentic assessment
of laboratory work would involve laboratory processes rather
than a paper and pencil exam.
• The assessments use a variety of measurements to
document learning outcomes. For
example, for research based labs we would evaluate students’
proposals, laboratory
notebooks, and presentations of results.
The research experiments we develop will contain assessments
that measure students’ understanding of the process
scientists use to add to the science knowledge base, their
creativity in applying these concepts to address problems,
and their ability to communicate these ideas. Each assessment
plan will have one or more formative assessments built into
it and each plan will have a summative assessment. Together,
these two forms of assessment will provide feedback to students
and faculty about the students’ progress and information
for the necessary tasks of assigning grades. Professor William
Robinson will work with faculty who design the research projects
to develop assessment tools for student understanding and
performance.
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