RCN-UBE: The Advancing Assessment Skills in BIOlogy Network (ASK BIO)--A Faculty Development Initiative for Under-resourced Institutions

Johnson County Community College, Overland Park KS

Investigators

Abstract

This Research Coordination Network is a response to two problems in biology education: 1) There are often glaring mismatches between what biology faculty and other STEM instructors state as their course goals and the assessments students take; and 2) The lack of regional and local opportunities prevent many faculty at under-resourced institutions, which disproportionally serve students underrepresented in STEM, from engaging in professional development. The Advancing assessment SKills in BIOlogy (ASK BIO) Network will address these issues in two ways. First, the network will design and implement faculty development workshops intended for faculty at under-resourced institutions on how to write machine-gradable assessment questions that present a high level of cognitive challenge and that are aligned with learning outcomes inspired by the "Vision and Change" report. Second, the network will provide communities of practice for participants with which they can remain engaged. Aligning assessments with learning objectives is a basic element of good course design. In introductory biology courses across the country, exam questions--what students get graded on--and course goals are commonly mismatched: instructors who embrace the unifying conceptual frameworks outlined in the "Vision and Change" report and the competencies-based focus of the "Training Future Physicians" document often give exams that predominantly test recall or low-level conceptual understanding. This project focuses on the often-neglected skill of writing exam questions that ask students to apply, analyze, synthesize, or interpret information in addition to just recalling it and will develop regional communities of practice to help faculty with skills development. ASK BIO will synergize with an ongoing effort by the BioInteractive group at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which is developing a freely accessible online database of high-level, machine-gradable questions for introductory biology. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action" (http://visionandchange/finalreport) with additional support provided by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.