This work stems from the fact that objectively assessing student “mastery” of science concepts without truly understanding how they are making sense of these concepts, continues to be one of the most difficult tasks I face as an educator. A model eliciting activity (MEA) is an instructional tool that provides students and teachers with plenty of opportunities to express, test, and refine their thinking while simultaneously providing a document trail of thinking. Model eliciting activities allow teachers, students, and researchers to gain valuable information about how students construct, test, and revise models. Essentially, they are rich metacognitive tools that encourage students to express and refine their own thinking while simultaneously providing an opportunity for teachers and students themselves to gain insight on how their students are learning. However, two difficulties arise in the implementation of MEAs: (1) assessing the quality of the tasks involved in MEAs, and (2) assessing student knowledge demonstrated through MEAs (Wang et.al., 2009). This report reviews the literature on assessing MEAs and focuses on the development of a generalized assessment framework for model eliciting activities in a middle school science context. / text

Undergraduate engineering education is designed to prepare students for their careers. The rise of technology in modern engineering allows for a shift in the way undergraduates are prepared for the modern workplace. Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs) allow students to think critically about their own work and allow instructors to analyze the students’ problem solving methods. To ensure that new MEAs are as effective as possible they are subject to six basic principles: model construction, reality, generalizability, self-assessment, model documentation, and effective prototype. This document focuses on evaluating new MEAs for their adherence to the six principles from an instructor's and student's perspective. Four new MEAs were created and implemented in the school year of 2009-2010. Two of the MEAs were designed to target a sophomore level thermal engineering class. The first was an introduction to data acquisition systems (DAQs) and the second was an introduction to strain gauges. These two MEAs were tested on two separate classes and were evaluated strictly from an instructor’s perspective. The two MEAs met their objectives for introducing DAQs and strain gauges respectively and managed to reinforce existing ideas at the same time. However, the MEA about DAQs appeared to adhere to all of the six principles while the MEA about strain gauges did not. The other two MEAs were designed for an introductory thermodynamics course. The students' solutions to the MEAs were analyzed to determine the MEAs' effectiveness as well as how well they follow the six principles of MEAs. The first MEA was centered around a supermileage vehicle and asks the students to model an engine cycle from a P-V diagram of a real engine cycle. Careful analysis of the solutions that the students turned in found that the MEA did not provide a way for the students to verify their models. It was also found that students were learning about isothermal and adiabatic curves on their own which satisfied the main goal of the MEA which was to familiarize the students with simple processes. The second activity was based upon an industrial process that delivered waste energy into a river and the students were asked to model a power plant that could use the energy and lower the amount of heat dumped into the river. The objective was to get the students to think about entropy and how much energy can be salvaged in the system. A vast majority of students enjoyed the activity saying it was well worth their time, while only half of the students identified that entropy had some part in the MEA. Whether or not the objective to get the students to associate usable energy with entropy production was accomplished is uncertain. What was determined was that some students were unable to check their answers and they developed models that were inaccurate. From this observation it was seen that the self assessment principle was not being properly addressed. All of the developed MEAs satisfied their end goals of teaching the students the material that the MEA was developed around. The two most prominent issues were students misunderstanding the problem statement and students not being able to verify their models. These are important observations for these particular MEAs that were only possible through intensive analysis of the solutions from a student's perspective. The detailed analysis of the solutions using the six principles as a guideline provided insight to some of the problems students were having. For future work, these same MEAs could be improved upon and then analyzed again to see if the analysis is consistent and that the identified problems were corrected.

The Gazebo Project is an open ended, generative, model eliciting project that was designed to allow students to develop their own understanding of fractions rather than receiving direct instruction. The students were placed in three different sections to work on the project, a group section that allowed for collaborative work, a peer tutoring section and an individual section. All students were given a pre-project clinical interview to assess their knowledge prior to beginning The Gazebo Project. They were then separated into one of the three sections for the project. The Gazebo Project charged the students with the task of designing a gazebo that would maximize the amount of seating and minimize the size of the entrance, which needed to be a whole side length. By challenging the students to minimize the entrance they were guided to explore the relationship between side length and number of sides. Upon completion of the project all students were then given a post-project clinical interview to determine the growth in their understanding of fractions. The study suggested that The Gazebo Project was effective in helping students develop their understanding of fractions, but only when the students worked in the group section or the peer tutoring section. The element of student discourse created an environment where students could create, and critique each other’s plan and in the process student discourse contributed to revised thinking. This study challenges educators to consider the benefits of open ended generative activities and discourse in student learning and also encourages the use of regular clinical interviews to assess student reasoning. / text