SCIENTIFIC PROJECTS WITHIN CRCSTL
1) Sara Wyse and Diane Ebert-May
Project Title: Preparing Graduate Students to Teach: Investigating the Scientific Teaching Model
Project Collaborators: Sara Wyse (www.msu.edu/~kelzersa) -- my dissertation work; and Diane Ebert-May (major professor)
Brief Description:
Graduate teaching assistants (TAs) play a large role in educating undergraduates at many universities across the country. As undergraduate education undergoes a reform to become more learner-centered and inquiry-based, future faculty members must also be prepared to teach with methods that align with these reform goals. Learner-centered classrooms will only be sustained long-term if graduate students receive training in these new methods while they are early in their teaching careers, that is, while they are TAs.
This project investigates a new model of TA training implemented in an introductory biology course. TAs in this course teach laboratory sections that are undergoing transition to be more learner-centered, and as such, their training will also be undergoing reform. The new TA-training model is based on Scientific Teaching (Handelsman et al. 2004), which requires active learning strategies used to engage students in the process of science. TAs will therefore be engaged through active learning strategies as they are prepared to teach. We hypothesize that when TAs gain and understanding of scientific teaching, they will design and implement more effective active learning in their laboratory sections.
Prior to the new model of TA training, data were collected on the current TA training. These data include self-report qualitative and quantitative responses from surveys of TAs, video tapes of TAs teaching and of preparation meetings and TA-designed assessments and lab objectives. These data are being used to inform the development of this new TA training model. After training TAs in this new model, similar data will be collected, analyzed and compared both before and after this new training model is implemented.
Funding:
Some support has been provided by the FAST program, otherwise, this project has yet to be funded.
2) Duncan Sibley (http://www.msu.edu/~sibley)
EXPERT & NOVICE REASONING BY ANALOGY
Modern philosophical naturalism a la Giere and Wimsatt provide a rich context in which we may re-think science education. From this perspective, I think we should look at how real scientists reason about real problems. This includes considering our cognitive abilities, social contexts and embodiments of our decision-making processes. In other words, this approach embraces complexity of learning science just as new approaches to natural science are embracing its complexity. This is not a reductionist philosophy. Applied to science education, philosophical naturalism suggests we look carefully at how experts reason and ask how we might design curricula that help students develop similar abilities.
As a geologists, I've not encounter colleagues attempting to carefully deduce historical explanations. The process is much messier than that. One type of messy reasoning that I have encountered is analogical reasoning.
Analogies are sometimes seen as clever illustrative rhetorical devices. They are much more. The fact that people draw them so effortlessly and the metaphorical nature of common language led cognitive scientists to argue that analogical reasoning is a basic part of human cognition. Analogical reasoning has been fundamental to geologic understanding from its inception. Lyell implicitly acknowledged the importance of analogies with the phrase, “the present is the key to the past”.
Despite the prevalence of analogy-based argument in the geologic literature and findings of cognitive scientists that analogical reasoning is a basic form of human reasoning, very little is known about college students’ ability to reason analogically. Three preliminary studies were undertaken to investigate students’ analogical reasoning. In the first study, 92 non-science majors in a general education geoscience course at a large, public mid-western university were given a test question on similarities and differences between sea ice (analog) and tectonic plates (target). Sixty-four percent of the students wrote correct meaningful similarities and 42% wrote correct meaningful differences. A substantial number of students (30%) wrote trivial differences such as ice only forms where it is cold. A second study involved 38 students who were asked to draw analogies between the water cycle and carbon cycle and between the water cycle and rock cycle. Thirty-four percent of the students wrote 1) correct relational or descriptive analogs 2) made a reasonable prediction based on the analog and 3) devised a test of the prediction for both analogies. Sixty percent of the students missed one or two of the three components in either one or both analogies. In a third study, 11 undergraduate geoscience majors and graduate students were interviewed. The students were asked to explain a variety of geologic phenomena and all drew analogies.
3) Douglas Luckie
A. Project Title: C-TOOLS (http://ctools.msu.edu) -Concept-Connector Tools for Online Learning in Science, [and a spin-off project GUIDE (http://ctools.msu.edu/guide/)]
Project Collaborators- Douglas Luckie, Diane Ebert-May, Duncan Sibley and Scott Harrison
Brief description- The C-TOOLS project created a web-based, concept mapping Java applet with automatic scoring and ultimately released the final applications and source code to the public. The Concept Connector tool is designed to enable students in large introductory science classes at the university level to visualize their thinking online and receive immediate formative feedback. The Concept Connector's flexible scoring system enabled automatic and immediate online scoring of concept map homework. C-TOOLS also contains a courseware management system streamlined for the creation, editing and management of concept map assignments in a classroom setting. The related online system, called GUIDE, allows students to practice as well as receive feedback [like a guide on the side] as they build "box and arrow" diagrams of natural systems.
Source of funding- Funded by the National Science Foundation 2001-2006
B. Project Title: BRAID -Bridging the Disciplines with Authentic Inquiry and Discourse http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/braid/)(
Project Collaborators- Ryan Sweeder, Douglas Luckie
Brief description- Not available yet.
Source of funding- Funded by the National Science Foundation 2007-2010.
4) Julie Libarkin
Geocognition Research Lab (GRL)
Non-science majors’ conceptual understanding and models
An important and longstanding component of my research is documentation and interpretation of non-scientific geoscience conceptions and models held by students, primarily non-science major undergraduates. This work has evolved into a number of projects and publications, and I have continued this work here at MSU.
GCI: The Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI) is an assessment tool designed by Libarkin and colleagues under a prior NSF grant. Assessing the effectiveness of instructional methods on the conceptual development of students requires valid and reliable tools to measure learning. The GCI currently consists of a bank of 69 questions from a small sub-set of the Earth science sub-disciplines typically covered in an introductory college course. This assessment instrument is currently not capable of providing instructors and researchers with a tool to fully explore learning in the geosciences. Developing a concept test with the qualitative and statistical foundation needed to ensure robust results is extremely time consuming. The current GCI required over four years of intensive work where I devoted nearly three full-time years to the project. Clearly, a radical new approach to concept inventory development is needed to expand this instrument to fully encompass the topics covered in college survey-level courses, with perhaps three times as many topic areas and five times as many questions as the current GCI.
A new NSF grant through the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program was awarded in Sept. 2007 and will work towards community development of GCI questions, validation of these questions by the GRL research team, and dissemination and online testing through a new GCI WebCenter. This WebCenter is being developed by Gerd Kortemeyer, takes advantage of existing LON-CAPA technology supported by MSU, and will provide faculty and researcher users with automatic feedback on student conceptions. This will offer faculty an opportunity to diagnose and target problematic ideas during instruction, and will give researchers immediate access to data.
The ongoing GCI work is new and unique because it allows the entire geoscience community to participate in these efforts through a webcenter that will enable:
Revision of existing GCI questions in light of emerging comments from the 100+ faculty and researchers now using the instrument;
Creation of an easy-to-use on-line testing system, including an automated scoring and faculty feedback system. This online testing system will also allow for collection of GCI data that can be made accessible to any interested researcher; and
Expansion of the GCI to cover a broader range of topics in the Earth sciences. We have estimated that at least 500 questions would be required to both cover the scope of topics taught in entry-level courses and accommodate the range of student abilities. A collaborative effort by the geoscience community is a unique and efficient way to expand the GCI. Researchers would create GCI questions based upon qualitative data, submit items online, and we would perform the necessary reliability, validity and item response theory tests for inclusion on the GCI.
The original GCI work was funded under DUE- 0127765 and DUE-0350395. New GCI funding is under DUE- 0717790.
ConcepTests: A project to investigate the efficacy of ConcepTest questions, led by faculty at University of Akron, was funded by NSF’s CCLI program in Sept. 2007. Although the use of conceptests (also referred to as “clickers” or “student response systems”) has been investigated in other science domains, a systematic study of the impact of conceptests on student learning in geosciences is needed. This research will investigate the relationship between conceptests and student performance in community colleges, and large and small four-year institutions. The GRL will be evaluating developed questions, will conduct statistical analyses of student performance on questions, and will compare this performance with performance on a subset of GCI questions. Some of the multiple-choice questions used in this study may be submitted to the GCI website for review and validation, providing an interesting overlap between the two projects. (Subcontract on DUE-0716397 to University of Akron).
Plate Tectonics: The GRL is also investigating novice and expert understanding of plate tectonics in a project led by Scott Clark (GRL postdoctoral Research Associate). Over 500 questionnaires have been collected from non-science majors enrolled at large research universities and community colleges, from undergraduate majors and graduate students in geosciences, from expert geoscientists in tectonics related fields, and from geoscientists in general. We have discovered that common illustrations meant to convey plate tectonics ideas may actually be impeding student understanding. In addition, expert geoscientists may have a weaker grasp of subtle features of plate tectonics theory than previously understood. Dr. Clark, myself, and two community college faculty submitted a proposal to NSF’s CCLI program for investigation of novice through expert models in June 2008.
Climate Change: An undergraduate researcher in the GRL, Sam Rossman, has conducted and presented research on college student understanding of global change over Earth’s history. His analysis of over 100 timelines has garnered fascinating information about both student understanding of change in Earth’s spheres as well as the connection (or lack of connection) across student models. For example, we have discovered that student models about the occurrence of ice ages on Earth are uncorrelated to their models of atmospheric temperature. This suggests that students have fragmented, disconnected ideas and are far from the systems level thinking we hope to instill in all scientifically literate people.
In a second project, an award through NSF’s Geoscience Education program to TERC supports development of a climate change curriculum for 12th grade students. The GRL, in collaboration with K. McNeal of Mississippi State University, will develop assessment instruments for investigation of students’ pre- and post-instruction conceptions about climate change over time. We are collecting responses to two open-ended questionnaires from 180 students both before and after experiencing a climate-oriented cryosphere curriculum. We will also be conducting interviews with six participating teachers to gauge their satisfaction with the new materials. (Consultant on GEO-0807575 to TERC).
Expert-novice continuum research into geoscientists’ cognitive processes
Most of the work emanating from the GRL can be classified as expert-novice research. I am interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between non-scientists and geoscientists, particularly in how the perceive, recognize, and interpret geological phenomena. A new project to unravel the nature of geoscience expertise will soon be funded through NSF’s Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) program (lead PI is Heather Petcovic of Western Michigan University). This project is a collaboration between Western Michigan University and MSU geoscientists, a geographer, and a cognitive psychologist. We will be investigating novice and expert behavior and cognition in the field, as well as performance on standard and geoscience-specific cognitive tests. The GRL will lead the laboratory component of this study, investigating working memory function and characteristics.
This project will produce a cognitive model that can explain the transition from novice to expert geoscientist. Two related research projects will investigate cognition across undergraduate geology majors, geology graduate students, and professional geologists. Our intrinsic, field-based tasks are imbedded in the real world and utilize authentic field tasks commonly undertaken by students and professional geoscientists. Navigation (GPS) as well as cognitive (maps, audio logs, and debriefing interviews) data will investigate complex natural problem solving. Our contrived, laboratory tasks are modeled after well-used cognitive science approaches and use recall tasks to investigate working memory function, perceiving tasks to investigate perceptual abilities, and categorizing tasks to understand how domain-specific knowledge is structured. Specifically we expect to produce: (1) Valid and reliable methods for investigating field-based geologic cognition and navigation, which we will broadly disseminate, and could allow for field-based cognitive data to be readily collected from large numbers of students enrolled in field courses; (2) New laboratory-based cognitive experiments that push the boundaries of existing knowledge about the cognitive processes underlying the learning and teaching of complex geoscience content, which will bridge the geoscience education and cognitive science literatures on STEM learning; and (3) A theoretical model for geocognition derived from empirical data that describes how cognitive processes manifest and change as students progress toward expertise, which will provide a foundation for research-based instructional design and teaching in the geosciences.
Development of new analytical techniques
One of the most interesting outcomes of my research is the application of new approaches to analyzing geocognition data. A common approach to analysis of qualitative data in science education utilizes thematic content analysis to uncover common characteristics exhibited by a study population. This approach is invaluable for recognizing models of natural phenomena held by study subjects, and allows new research or instruction to focus on these widespread models.
While I use and value thematic content analysis, I have found that additional analytical approaches can reveal undiscovered patterns in qualitative data. As examples, I have applied ternary diagram analysis to investigating of student ideas about geologic time, and am collaborating with a colleague in geography on an ArcGIS-based analysis of student augmented maps. The ternary diagram analysis has been published in Journal of Geoscience Eduation, and suggests that student-generated timelines can provide faculty with insight into models held by students without requiring exhaustive content analysis of data. In particular, we discovered that students with a young-Earth perspective, that the Earth is less than 500,000 years old, all plot in the same zone on a ternary diagram. Faculty and researchers can therefore predict how many students within a population will hold a young Earth perspective through use of simple ternary plots, without needing to ask students potentially unsettling direct questions about personal beliefs.
Use of ArcGIS to analyze student models has potential to transform the way in which researchers use maps and drawings in investigations of alternative conceptions. A simple analysis of student placement of earthquakes and volcanoes on a world map has been presented at the annual Geological Society of America meeting, and a manuscript for Journal of Geography in Higher Education is nearing completion. In collaboration with Kathleen Baker, a geographer and GIS specialist at Western Michigan University, a comparative analysis of standard thematic content analysis and statistical approaches available through ArcGIS was conducted on 80 maps. While the thematic content analysis provided insight into models held by students, the ArcGIS approaches yielded statistical analyses unavailable in traditional approaches, and revealed new patterns suggestive of underlying schema based in fundamental cognitive processes. We suggest that ArcGIS can be used for any data with an underlying base map or figure. We plan to use this approach, for example, to analyze data collected under the plate tectonics study described above.
5) Mark Urban-Lurain
Analyzing Constructed Responses (ACR): Using Linguistic Software to Understand Students' Conceptions in Science
We are exploring multiple approaches to using linguistic analysis software for extracting conceptual categories from student written responses and using that data to build statistical models of students’ understanding and application of those concepts in biology, geology and chemistry.
Collaborators: John Merrill, Duncan Sibley, Andy Anderson, Merle Heidemann, Tammy Long, Joyce Parker, Gail Richmond
Funding: NSF.
EEES: Engaging Early Engineering Students to Expand Numbers of Degree Recipients
The focus of EEES is to improve retention and completion rates among engineering students. To do so, EEES will develop: (a) cross linkages between basic math/science courses and first year engineering courses, (b) a suite of diagnostics-driven intervention methods to help first and second year engineering students survive and thrive in their early years, (c) a core of upper division students who will act to supply "Supplemental Instruction" to lower division students for key technical courses, and (d) sound and long term faculty connections with first and second year students.
Collaborators: Tom Wolff, Jack Courtney, Diana Breidis, Neeraj Buch, Louise Pacquette (LCC), Natasha Speers, Jon Sticklen, Cliff Weil
Funding: NSF
FIRST Database
To support data-driven instructional decision making, we are building a database for storing, searching and supporting a wide variety of analyses of assessment data from undergraduate science courses.
Collaborators: Diane Ebert-May, Matt Jones (NCEAS), Ryan McFall (Hope College)
Funding: NSF
CPACE: A Collaborative Process to Align Computing Education with Engineering Workforce Needs
CPACE is developing, implementing, and evaluating a process to create an academic/industry community as a lynchpin of curricular change. The specific project goal is to demonstrate the process in the context of meeting industrial needs for computational problem solving in engineering.
Collaborators: Tom Wolff, Diana Breidis, Neeraj Buch, Louise Pacquette (LCC), Jon Sticklen, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW)
Funding: NSF
Problem-Based Learning Project for Teachers
On this project, teachers and researchers work together to develop, implement and study the impact of a subject matter-focused, Problem-Based Learning (PBL) professional development model for preservice and inservice science teachers.
Collaborators: Jan Eberhardt, Joyce Parker, Matt Koehler, Merle Heidemann, Mary Jane Rice, Christopher Reznich, Alex Axima (LCC), Christel Marschall (LCC), Jeannine Stanaway (LCC)
Funding: NSF.
Diagnostic Question Clusters (DQC) and Data Analysis Group (DAG)
We are developing questions to diagnose common student misconceptions in biology, developing frameworks for biology instruction (DQC) and evaluating instructional interventions to address the misconceptions using the frameworks (DAG)
Collaborators: Joyce Parker, Andy Anderson, Merle Heidemann, Julie Libarkin, Tammy Long, John Merrill, Gail Richmond, Duncan Sibley
Funding: NSF
LON-CAPA
Free open-source distributed learning content management and assessment system
Collaborators: Gerd Kortemeyer, Felcia Berryman, Ron Fox, Ed Kashy, Stuart Raeburn
Funding: NSF
Animal Behavior & Welfare Group
Our research aims to improve the quality of life for animals and provide a scientific foundation for animal welfare standards. The online animal welfare course allows interaction between students and instructors from many different institutions and provides students with access to a broad network of animal welfare professionals and researchers as well as opportunities for dialogue and future collaboration.
Collaborators: Janice Swanson, Camie Heleski, Janice Siegford, Dalen, Agnew, Theresa Bernardo, Lana Kaiser, Robert Malinowski, Richard Snider
Funding: USDA.
6) Charles W. (Andy) Anderson, Jonathon Schramm
"Diagnostic Question Clusters on Matter and Energy in College Biology Classes"
- Charlene D'Avanzo, Charles W. Anderson, Alan Griffith, Laurel Hartley, Brook Wilke, and Jonathon Schramm.
This project is currently piloting the use of diagnostic question clusters in a variety of college biology courses across the nation, at colleges spanning a broad geographic, demographic, and structural (community colleges to R-1 institutions) range. The goal of the DQCs is to assess the understanding of students in both entry- and upper-level courses of matter cycling and energy flows in socio-ecological systems.
Funding is provided by a NSF grant through the CCLI program.
7) Joyce Parker
Diagnostic Question Clusters: Development and Testing in Introductory Geology and Biology
NSF – ASA #0243126
The multidisciplinary team for this project includes: Joyce Parker, Merle Heidemann, Duncan Sibley, John Merrill, Mark Urban-Lurain, Charles Anderson, Gail Richmond.
We have made an extensive study of students’ thinking as captured in their responses to open-ended questions and interviews and as well as to multiple choice questions developed based on these data. This study has revealed that many students do not use fundamental principles such as tracing matter and energy when learning introductory biology and geology. We are nearing completion on the development of six clusters of diagnostic questions that can be used to measure students’ abilities to use these principles when learning about the water, rock, and carbon cycles as well as cellular respiration, photosynthesis, and meiosis. Because college level instructors assume that students’ “common sense” includes these guides to reasoning, tracing matter and energy and keeping track of scale are not usually explicit components of introductory curricula. Therefore we are currently articulating these usually hidden components in the form of frameworks that make explicit how these principles apply to the usual content.
A FRAMEWORK FOR REASONING IN CELLULAR BIOLOGY COURSES
ACTIVITIES
NSF - CCLI #0736947
The multidisciplinary team for this project includes: Joyce Parker, Merle Heidemann, Barbara Sears, John Merrill, Robin Wagner, Arthur Wohill, Tammy Long, James Smith, Doug Luckie, Charles Anderson, Gail Richmond, Mark Urban-Lurain.
From previous work, we found that students have trouble learning some basic biology topics because they don’t apply fundamental principles such as tracing information, matter, and energy (TIME) (See Diagnostic Question Clusters). To facilitate students’ learning of this problematic material, we are developing formative assessment activities in the form of homework exercises and in-class exercises. We are studying the efficacy of these materials in genetics, cellular respiration, and photosynthesis. We are working in classrooms here at MSU as well as at Lansing Community College. These include introductory and upper level courses.