This is exciting. Link: Bioliteracy Project Home Page.
Welcome. Our goal is to generate, test and distribute the tools needed to determine
whether students are learning what teachers think they are teaching.
We assume that
accurate and timely assessment of student knowledge will encourage
the educational world toward more effective teaching and better
student understanding of basic biology.
And Ed's Tools
Building concept inventories can be a daunting task, since it rests on research into student misconceptions.
The standard approach to capturing student misconceptions involves extensive interviews that probe what they really think.
Ed's Tools enables you to capture misconceptions in a more efficient manner.
Students are asked open-ended essay type questions.
Their answers can then be coded with respect to which concepts are present (up to 25 different concepts for each question/coder combination) using the java-based Ed's Tools webware.
Captured concepts/misconcepts can then be easily retrieved, while retaining the students' natural language.
We are currently using Ed's Tools to generate the Biology Concept Inventory, and have begun work with Professor Mary Nelson and colleagues (UC Boulder), to generate a Math and Calculus Concept Inventory (MCCI). We are also working with Isidoros Doxas (CU Boulder), Mark Moldwin (UCLA), and Wendell Horton (U Texas) to generate a Space Physcis Concept Inventory (SPCI).
If you are interested in using Ed's Tools in your project, let us know.
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