Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI): A diagnostic tool for revealing student thinking

📝 Abstract

A key to effective teaching is an awareness and accurate understanding of the thinking and implicit assumptions that students bring to the subject to be learned. In the absence of extensive Socratic interactions with students, one strategy to assess student thinking involves the use of concept inventories (CIs). CIs are typically multiple-choice assessments, constructed based on research into student thinking and language, and designed to reveal the presence of common misconceptions and implicit assumptions pertaining to a particular facet of a subject. Here we describe the open-source Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI), a diagnostic, multiple-choice instrument designed to provide instructors with a preliminary map of a number of basic ideas in molecular level biology. We describe the strategy behind its design, the research upon which it is based, item construction, and its possible uses as a means to reveal and address persistent and often unrecognized conceptual obstacles.

💡 Analysis

A key to effective teaching is an awareness and accurate understanding of the thinking and implicit assumptions that students bring to the subject to be learned. In the absence of extensive Socratic interactions with students, one strategy to assess student thinking involves the use of concept inventories (CIs). CIs are typically multiple-choice assessments, constructed based on research into student thinking and language, and designed to reveal the presence of common misconceptions and implicit assumptions pertaining to a particular facet of a subject. Here we describe the open-source Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI), a diagnostic, multiple-choice instrument designed to provide instructors with a preliminary map of a number of basic ideas in molecular level biology. We describe the strategy behind its design, the research upon which it is based, item construction, and its possible uses as a means to reveal and address persistent and often unrecognized conceptual obstacles.

📄 Content

Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI): A diagnostic tool for revealing student thinking Michael W. Klymkowsky*☀, Sonia M. Underwood** & R. Kathleen Garvin-Doxas***

• Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and CU Teach University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0347 ** Chemistry, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634 *** Center for Computational Language and Education Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0594 ☀ Corresponding author: michael.klymkowsky@colorado.edu Abstract:  A key to effective teaching is an awareness and accurate understanding of the thinking and implicit assumptions that students bring to the subject to be learned. In the absence of extensive Socratic interactions with students, one strategy to assess student thinking involves the use of concept inventories (CIs). CIs are typically multiple-choice assessments, constructed based on research into student thinking and language, and designed to reveal the presence of common misconceptions and implicit assumptions pertaining to a particular facet of a subject. Here we describe the open-source Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI), a diagnostic, multiple-choice instrument designed to provide instructors with a preliminary map of a number of basic ideas in molecular level biology. We describe the strategy behind its design, the research upon which it is based, item construction, and its possible uses as a means to reveal and address persistent and often unrecognized conceptual obstacles. Introduction: " What learning actually is can be the subject of reasonable debate. From a Socratic perspective (see Cicero, 1989), to have learned something means to understand the assumptions behind it, its implications, and its application (where appropriate) to new situations. Yet few of us attain this Socratic ideal with our own students, particularly within the high enrollment, introductory sequence courses that are all too common. In the real world we face a situation analogous to observer bias in scientific studies - we can see what we want (or is in our best interest) to see. In the context of scientific research, this situation is addressed through double-blind experimental design, and more importantly, independent replication and the building upon previous observations, a process that tests both their validity and the extent of their generality, at least in theory (see Ioannidis 2005; Freedman 2010).
  Klymkowsky et al Monday, December 20, 2010! 1 These are ideals that are difficult, impractical, and rather unfortunately rare in the pedagogical arena.
  In practice, assessment is almost always carried out in an “uncontrolled manner” by the instructor, a person who is not only inextricably involved, both emotionally and professionally, but also potentially impacted by the outcome. It was in this context that instruments designed to examine studentsʼ thinking about specific concepts were first introduced (in the post-Socratic era) by Treagust and colleagues (Treagust 1985; Peterson 1986; Treagust 1986; Fetherstonhaugh 1987). An example that has a broad impact on thinking in physics education is the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) (Hestenes and Halloun, 1995; Hestenes et al., 1992). “When he first heard about the FCI, applied physicist Eric Mazur of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, assumed that his élite students would perform perfectly well in the traditional lecture setting. So when they received an average FCI score of 70, where 80 is considered a pass, he got “a slap in the face” (Powell, 2003).
  " At the same time it is worth keeping in mind that many of the original and subsequent claims made for the FCI have not been validated (Huffman and Heller 1995); while a useful diagnostic the FCI like other instruments, provide only a starting point for subsequent instructional interventions. When used thoughtfully, a wide range of instruments (which we will lump together as CIs) can help ground instructorsʼ thinking about their studentsʼ understanding and implicit assumptions, which as noted by Huffman & Heller (1995), can often be context specific, for example, “Even though students understand the Second law with hockey pucks on ice, this does not necessarily mean that they also understand the Second Law with rockets in space.” “We use current knowledge structures to help to assimilate new ones more rapidly. To the extent that current beliefs are true, then, we will assimilate further true information more rapidly. However, when the subset of beliefs that the individual is drawing on contains substantial amounts of false information, knowledge projection will delay the assimilation of the correct information” (Stanovich, 2009). In a classical context, instructor understanding of student thinking would be gained through an on-going Socratic interactions which, when carried out by a perceptive interrogator and receptive students, provides both wit

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