Assessments improve student learning. More than 50 years ago, Benjamin Bloom showed how to conduct this process in practical and highly effective ways when he described the practice of mastery learning (Bloom, 1968, 1971). Open-ended problems in assignments, as opposed to more closed-ended problems where there are a small set of known correct responses, offer an opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding by articulating their underlying thought processes. In such problems, students are required to explain in a sentence or two, how to solve a particular problem or how they arrived at a solution. Open-ended responses stimulate a thought process in a student and allow teachers to better evaluate the student’s deeper understanding of a topic beyond what can be observed in other problem types. Due to the open-ended nature of student responses to these problems, however, it is sometimes difficult for teachers to devote time to assessing student work, which causes students to apply lower effort or disengage from such problems if it is believed that a teacher is unlikely to attend to it. In order to promote better student engagement with these open-ended questions and to motivate them to apply more effort in answering these questions, I have built an infrastructure to conduct RCTs(Randomized Control Trials) with open-ended problems within ASSISTments, an online assessment tool; I have built an infrastructure that caters to machine learning models for the automated assessment of the student work. I am using this infrastructure to design an RCT that will evaluate the effect of prompted self-revision on the quality of the student responses.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-59).

This dissertation is concerned with the detailed accounts of twenty-one students who participated in a peer tutoring program known as Supplemental Instruction (S.I.) In this approach, the development of students’ study skills through weekly peer tutoring sessions, is built on particular subject curriculum, not separate from it. In this study the subject selected was Statistics for Marketers. The approach is designed to assist students to succeed in ‘high risk subjects’ through voluntary attendance at the S.I. sessions. / The central question to this study was how can students’ critical awareness of their learning experience while participating in an S.I. group, inform our teaching practice in universities, at a time when we are facing an incredibly challenging, competitive environment. The interest in S.I. stemmed from its links with the concept of peer monitoring as a learning strategy, studied in earlier research. It appeared to offer an innovative first year intervention strategy, at a time when Australian universities are beginning to compete more openly in offering students high quality teaching and learning. Research to date had not investigated to any depth how the approach worked nor gained any detailed student accounts of their learning experiences in an S.I. program. (For complete abstract open document)

Master of Science / Department of Agronomy / Michel D. Ransom / Soil Taxonomy is the official soil classification system used in the United States and many other countries. Any soil in the world can be classified from the order to the family level using a set of classification keys that are currently in an eleventh edition. The classification system is quite complex and can be too complicated for beginning soil science students to understand and use. Thus, a national advisory working group of the National Cooperative Soil Survey developed an abbreviated guide called the Simplified Guide to Soil Taxonomy. The goal of the simplified guide is to help reduce the complexity of soil taxonomy and aid in the classification of soils from the order to the great group level. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the simplified guided when used by students in soil science courses to classify soils as compared to traditional methods using the more detailed keys. Classes at Kansas State University were used in the study and included the laboratory sections of AGRON 305 (Soils) and AGRON 515 (Soil Genesis and Classification). Student learning was evaluated using pre and post-test scores, assignments, and evaluation surveys. Results from the fall and spring semesters of AGRON 305 vary based on pre and post test scores and the assignment. Written evaluations indicated that both methods were easy to understand, especially as the lab progressed, but students responded more favorably to the abbreviated descriptions of taxa, pictures, and hyperlinks associated with the simplified guide. The Simplified Guide to Soil Taxonomy can be used in introductory soils courses. However, it is more suited for mid to upper level soil science courses, such as AGRON 515, where students responded favorably to the shorter and more comprehensible descriptions of taxa at the order, suborder, and great group level.

Published Article / This article describes a process of student learning outcomes assessment for a health sciences programme in radiography at a university in South Africa. Its purpose is to demonstrate that while the process of student learning outcomes assessment is universal, it can be used both nationally and internationally. As long as underlying premises are met, assessment needs to be considered within the context of a country's unique culture, society and history. Underlying premises include understanding the institution's mission and vision, determining that the programme's mission and vision are congruent with those of the institution, and involving faculty early in the assessment process.

A journey into the past century of genetics history reveals transformations of the concept of the gene through notions of discrete units that obeyed Mendelian laws to the modem bewildering gene concept. We can no longer say that a gene is a sequence of DNA that continuously and uniquely codes for a particular protein - it is the phenotype that defines the gene, rather than the other way around. Research into learning in genetics has largely focussed on issues such as problem solving and the process of meiosis. The central concept of the gene, however, has had little attention. How do students learn about the concept of the gene during an introductory high school genetics course? Is it possible to justify an analogy between the historical development of the concept of the gene and student learning? Can student learning about the gene be described as conceptual change and what are the factors that might influence this process? These are the issues that are addressed in this thesis.The general purpose of this study was to investigate Year 10 students' learning about the concept of the gene. The theoretical framework is embedded in the personal and social paradigms of constructivism and a multidimensional interpretive framework for conceptual change was utilised, enabling the data to be interpreted from ontological, epistemological and social/affective perspectives.A total of eight classroom sites were used to collect data as a series of linked case studies. Data from three of these cases were used to investigate Year 10 student learning about the concept of the gene and one of the cases was used to make an in-depth examination of individual student learning and conceptual change. The larger series of eight cases was drawn upon to provide data to support assertions made about the factors influencing conceptual change. Methods of data collection included classroom ++ / observations, student interviews, teacher interviews, student work-sheets and classroom quizzes. Traditional notions of research rigour were side-stepped for different standards that better suit the paradigm of naturalistic or constructivist inquiry. Credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability were enhanced by a thorough system of triangulation at the data source and collection level and at the data interpretation level for each of the research questions. Theory triangulation also was utilised through the multidimensional framework for conceptual change. In addition, methodology and case studies with a thick description that allow the readers to proceed on their own tracking and interpretation process are provided.The results of the research reported in this thesis are examined from several different perspectives. From an ontological perspective, Year 10 student learning about the concept of the gene is described by a proposed learning pathway that consists of four ontologically distinct models. The majority of the students in the classes, however, did not progress the entire length of the pathway, rather they completed their introductory genetics course with an "active particle gene" conception. This is the second model in the pathway. In other words, few students were found to have a modern conception of the gene.From an epistemological perspective of conceptual change, six students' post instruction conceptions of genes were classified as being intelligible, plausible or fruitful to the learner. For example, at the end of the genetics course, Alastair had an active particle gene" conception that he viewed as intelligible and plausible and Douglas had a "productive sequence of instructions gene" conception that was intelligible, plausible and fruitful. The student learning investigated in this study was described as conceptual change of the ++ / weaker kind that proceeded in an evolutionary manner because the new conceptions involved detailed explanations of the gene concept and were reconciled with old conceptions.A social/affective perspective revealed information about how the teaching approach and student interest in genetics influenced the process of conceptual change. Lack of student interest in submicroscopic explanatory phenomena and algorithmic approaches to problem solving were found to inhibit learning about the gene concept. The nature of the content was another perspective used to examine conceptual change. The process aspects of genetics content were said by teachers to be difficult to teach, and students found it difficult to link together ideas taught in genetics such as the double helix structure of DNA, the genetic code, protein synthesis and phenotypic expression. The different levels of representation in genetics content confused students; for example, Anna was unable to differentiate between submicroscopic DNA structure and symbolic representations of the genetic code such as the letters A, T, C and G.Implications from the study are that for students to construct a better understanding of the concept of the gene, teachers and curriculum writers should use the gene as a central organising concept in genetics courses and explicitly encourage students to build links with other genetics concepts. Improvements need to be made in the way that teachers teach genetics processes so that students are actively involved in thinking about the processes, especially by making the connections between the structure and function of genes. In addition, students need to be involved in learning strategies that will help to raise the status of sophisticated models of genes in their cognitive structures.Having the multidimensional framework for conceptual change as the interpretive framework and utilising ++ / different perspectives of conceptual change enabled triangulation of the theoretical interpretations of the data. This can be likened to creating a three dimensional picture of a learning situation rather than the equivalent of a linear, or two dimensional representation of a complex three dimensional phenomenon. A major implication for conceptual change research from this study is that the multidimensional framework has the potential to enable researchers and teachers to better understand the process of conceptual change in many fields. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study and future directions for research.

The purpose of this research project was to investigate the effects of a short-term teaching experiment on the learning of decimal numbers by primary students. The literature describes this area of mathematics as highly problematic for students. The content first covered student understanding of decimal symbols, and how this impacted upon their ability to order decimal numbers and carry out additive operations. It was then extended to cover the density of number property, and the application of multiplicative operations to situations involving decimals. In doing so, three areas of cognitive conflict were encountered by students, the belief that longer decimal numbers are larger than shorter ones (irrespective of the actual digits), that multiplication always makes numbers bigger, and that division always makes numbers smaller. The use of a microgenetic approach yielded data was able to be presented that provides details of the environment surrounding the moments where new learning was constructed. The characteristics of this environment include the use of physical artifacts and situational contexts involving measurement that precipitate student discussion and reflection. The methodology allowed for the collection of evidence regarding the highly complex nature of the learning, with evidence of 'folding back' to earlier schema and the co-existence of competing schema. The discussion presents reasons as to why the pedagogical approach that was employed facilitated learning. One of the main findings was that the use of challenging problems situated in measurement contexts that involved direct student participation promoted the extension and/or re-organization of student schema with regard to decimal numbers. The study has important implications for teachers at the upper primary level wanting to support student learning about the decimal numbers system.

Changes in the teacher's direction of a set of standardized class lessons were simulated by a single teacher who had been trained so that he was able to alter his frequency of use of specific teaching moves while holding constant his use of other kinds of moves. The effects of these predetermined changes in teaching behaviour during the course of the lessons were measured in terms of the level of retention and comprehension of 'target pupils' of the concepts and principles which the lessons were designed to teach. Target pupils were defined, and selected to act as experimental subjects, on the basis of their pre-experimental performance on three tests: a test of prerequisite skills, a test of prior knowledge of the topic, and the IPAT Culture Fair non-verbal intelligence test. Each experimental lesson treatment was reproduced and its effects on retention measured in at least three different classrooms. This thesis describes the results of a coordinated series of nine experiments, the last six of which were designed to measure the effects on student retention of predetermined changes in the frequency of use of specific classes of teaching moves during the oral lesson tactic. The results of these experiments indicated that student retention following the highly effective, standard lesson, treatments was dependent in part upon the number of primary questions asked (relative to the number of informing moves used), the number of reaction moves provided following pupil answers, the level of response control provided by primary questions, the level of response control provided by secondary questions, and the number of secondary response opportunities provided by the teacher (relative to the number of terminal informing moves employed). The experimental procedures employed during the investigations differed from those used during most previous studies of teaching behaviour in a number of ways. The studies made use of a single teacher specially trained to simulate the lesson behaviours typically employed by teachers and to manipulate these behaviours in predetermined ways. They made use of a lesson recording and lesson analysis procedure which enabled the characteristics of each lesson treatment to be described and reported. They made use of procedures which permitted the same lesson content to be reproduced in each experimental lesson treatment and they made use of two 'standard lesson' treatments from which all experimental treatments were derived and against which all lesson treatments could be evaluated. The studies specified in advance the population of target pupils for whom the standard lessons were designed and measured treatment effects in terms of the level of retention achieved by samples from this target population. They also provided for the replication, in several different classrooms, of each experimental lesson treatment and made use of the within replications variance, rather than the within subjects variance, as the error term in evaluating the reliability of obtained treatment effects.

Students at university encounter quantitative information in tables and graphs or through prose in textbooks, journals, electronic sources and in lectures. The degree to which students are able to engage with this kind of information and draw their own conclusions, influences the extent to which they need to rely on the interpretation of others. In particular, students who are studying in non-mathematical disciplines often fail to engage seriously with such material for a number of reasons. These may include a lack of confidence in their ability to do mathematics, a lack of mathematical skills required to understand the data, or a lack of an awareness of the importance of being able to read and interpret the data for themselves. In this thesis, the successful choice and use of skills to interpret quantitative information is referred to as numeracy. The level of numeracy exhibited by a student can vary depending on the social or cultural context, his/her confidence to engage with the quantitative information, the sophistication of the mathematics required, and his/her ability to evaluate the findings. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the conceptualisation of numeracy and its relationship to mathematics. The empirical study that follows this is focused on an aspect of numeracy of importance to university students: the reading and interpreting of tables of data in a range of non-mathematical contexts. The students who participated in this study were enrolled in degree programs in the social sciences. The study was designed to measure the effectiveness of a one-hour intervention workshop aimed at improving the levels of the students’ numeracy. The short length of the intervention was dictated by practical and organisational constraints. This workshop involved reading and interpreting a table of data using strategies based on the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982). The SOLO taxonomy was developed mainly as a means of classifying the quality of responses across both arts and science disciplines. The categorisation uses five levels: prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational and extended abstract. It can be used as a diagnostic tool at all levels of education as it can be seen as a spiral learning structure repeating itself with increasing levels of abstraction. It can also be used as a teaching tool in feedback to students. A measuring instrument, also based on the SOLO taxonomy, was designed to gauge the levels of the students’ responses to these tasks. Each response was allocated a level that was subsequently coded as a number from zero to seven. Because the responses were in distinct ordered categories, it was possible to analyse the scores using the Rasch Model (Rasch 1960/80) for polytomous responses, placing both the difficulty of the tasks and the ability of the students on an equal interval scale. The Rasch Model was also used to evaluate the measuring instrument itself. Some adjustments were made to the instrument in the light of this analysis. It was found that it is possible to construct an instrument to distinguish between levels of students’ written responses for each of the chosen table interpretation tasks. The workshop was evaluated through a comparison of the levels achieved by individual students before and after the workshop. T-tests for dependent samples indicated a significant improvement (p < 0.01) in student performance.