A Model for Using a Concept Inventory as a Tool for Students' Assessment and Faculty Professional Development

This essay describes how the use of a concept inventory has enhanced professional development and curriculum reform efforts of a faculty teaching community. The Host Pathogen Interactions (HPI) teaching team is composed of research and teaching faculty with expertise in HPI who share the goal of improving the learning experience of students in nine linked undergraduate microbiology courses. To support evidence-based curriculum reform, we administered our HPI Concept Inventory as a pre- and postsurvey to approximately 400 students each year since 2006. The resulting data include student scores as well as their open-ended explanations for distractor choices. The data have enabled us to address curriculum reform goals of 1) reconciling student learning with our expectations, 2) correlating student learning with background variables, 3) understanding student learning across institutions, 4) measuring the effect of teaching techniques on student learning, and 5) demonstrating how our courses collectively form a learning progression. The analysis of the concept inventory data has anchored and deepened the team's discussions of student learning. Reading and discussing students' responses revealed the gap between our understanding and the students' understanding. We provide evidence to support the concept inventory as a tool for assessing student understanding of HPI concepts and faculty development.

[1]  A. M. White.  The Process of Education , 1994 .

[2]  Steve Brigham.  Large-Scale Events: New Ways of Working Across the Organization , 1996 .

[3]  E. Yalow.  On Educational psychology: A cognitive view. , 1979 .

[4]  C. Hansel.  Scientific Teaching , 1972, Nature.

[5]  A. Odom,et al.  Development and application of a two‐tier diagnostic test measuring college biology students' understanding of diffusion and osmosis after a course of instruction , 1995 .

[6]  R. Mayer.  Rote Versus Meaningful Learning , 2002 .

[7]  Jenny McFarland,et al.  The second Conceptual Assessment in the Biological Sciences workshop. , 2008, Advances in physiology education.

[8]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[9]  D. Hestenes,et al.  A mechanics baseline test , 1992 .

[10]  J. Labov,et al.  Metagenomics: a call for bringing a new science into the classroom (while it's still new). , 2007, CBE life sciences education.

[11]  Katerina V. Thompson,et al.  A faculty team works to create content linkages among various courses to increase meaningful learning of targeted concepts of microbiology. , 2007, CBE life sciences education.

[12]  Sam Joseph,et al.  Assessing Student Understanding of Host Pathogen Interactions Using a Concept Inventory , 2009, Journal of microbiology & biology education.

[13]  Trevor R Anderson.  Bridging the educational research‐teaching practice gap , 2007, Biochemistry and molecular biology education : a bimonthly publication of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

[14]  Julia Khodor,et al.  A hierarchical biology concept framework: a tool for course design. , 2004, Cell biology education.

[15]  Dee U Silverthorn,et al.  It's difficult to change the way we teach: lessons from the Integrative Themes in Physiology curriculum module project. , 2006, Advances in physiology education.

[16]  G. Norman,et al.  Development and Evaluation of the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection , 2002 .

[17]  Trevor R Anderson.  Bridging the educational research‐teaching practice gap , 2007, Biochemistry and molecular biology education : a bimonthly publication of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

[18]  H. Schweingruber,et al.  TAKING SCIENCE TO SCHOOL: LEARNING AND TEACHING SCIENCE IN GRADES K-8 , 2007 .

[19]  Kathy Garvin-Doxas,et al.  Understanding randomness and its impact on student learning: lessons learned from building the Biology Concept Inventory (BCI). , 2008, CBE life sciences education.

[20]  Rebecca Brent,et al.  Does Faculty Research Improve Undergraduate Teaching? An Analysis of Existing and Potential Synergies , 2007 .

[21]  Paulette Robinson,et al.  Introductory biology courses: a framework to support active learning in large enrollment introductory science courses. , 2005, Cell biology education.

[22]  R. Hake.  Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses , 1998 .

[23]  D. Hestenes,et al.  Force concept inventory , 1992 .

[24]  Milton D. Cox.  Introduction to Faculty Learning Communities. , 2004 .

[25]  W. Robinson,et al.  An Inventory for Alternate Conceptions among First-Semester General Chemistry Students , 2002 .

[26]  C. W. Anderson,et al.  FOCUS ARTICLE: Implications of Research on Children's Learning for Standards and Assessment: A Proposed Learning Progression for Matter and the Atomic-Molecular Theory , 2006 .

[27]  Kathy Garvin-Doxas,et al.  Building, using, and maximizing the impact of concept inventories in the biological sciences: report on a National Science Foundation sponsored conference on the construction of concept inventories in the biological sciences. , 2007, CBE life sciences education.

[28]  E. Wenger.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[29]  Diane Ebert-May,et al.  Pathways to Scientific Teaching , 2008 .

[30]  Jennifer K Knight,et al.  The Genetics Concept Assessment: a new concept inventory for gauging student understanding of genetics. , 2008, CBE life sciences education.

[31]  M. J. Allen,et al.  Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education , 2003 .

[32]  A. Malcolm Campbell,et al.  Meeting report: genomics in the undergraduate curriculum--rocket science or basic science? , 2002, Cell biology education.