Redesigning Intro Bio Part 2: Assessments
Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash
My Learning Objectives need work… maybe?
In Redesigning Intro Bio Part 1: Start at the End, I describe the foundational decisions that I have made as I redesign my Intro Bio course from scratch. I synthesized core concepts and competencies based on several recent publications, Vision & Change, my institution’s course description, and my pedagogical values to create the following list of “Learning Objectives:” (LOs)
Seamlessly move through the Central Dogma from DNA replication, transcription, translation, and protein structure/function.
Describe how genetic information is passed on to offspring, and predict how genetic variation manifests in offspring populations.
Describe what causes populations to change over time.
Move between respiration and photosynthesis to articulate the carbon cycle at the biosphere level through the molecular level.
Describe the biological, social, and evolutionary relationships between human race and health.
Analyze data to make a scientific claim, and evaluate whether a scientific claim is supported by the data.
Describe the characteristics of a scientist, and personally relate to one or more scientists.
Evaluate the credibility of a Biology-related claim on the internet and articulate how the claim fits within a framework of how science is conducted.
OK, some of these are pretty crappy LOs. Jenni Momsen at NDSU has shared with me her 15 concise, clear LOs for Intro Bio. (she calls them “standards”). For example, “Use a model or series of models to illustrate the structures of DNA and RNA.” Reading her LOs, I know exactly what a student needs to do to demonstrate proficiency. Like, I can see in my head what students are doing to demonstrate their learning.
In contrast, how does a student demonstrate the ability to “seamlessly move through the Central Dogma?”
I was trained to write clear, descriptive Learning Objectives like Jenni’s — LOs that start with active verbs, like “use a model to…” and definitely not like “understand.” Yet, what I really want is for my students to understand — really understand! (grok!) — the central dogma. I can think of a number of ways they can show their understanding, but if I write LOs that focus on those specific ways of demonstrating understanding, my students and I will miss the big picture. Let me tell you, I had 120+ very specific learning objectives for my last iteration of BIO111 and I’m pretty sure most of my students didn’t grok the central dogma. (Is it possible for Introductory-level students to grok the central dogma??) I can’t tell if digging in my heels on vague big-picture LOs is pedagogically regressing or progressing. I suppose time (and this semester’s students!) will tell.
I need to use long-form exam questions to assess integrative understanding
How do I expect students to show they can “seamlessly move through the central dogma?” To figure out what that really means to me, I needed to write the exams, because in writing the exams, I would be forced to answer the question “but how will students demonstrate their learning?” Once I knew what I wanted them to do, I could design the rest of the course to give them practice doing just that.
I realized pretty quickly that the level of understanding I want my students to demonstrate can only be assessed through higher-level Bloom’s questions, which are extremely difficult to write well in a multiple-choice format. (I’m not anti-multiple-choice questions! I’ll use them in this course, too — more on that below.) But it is clear that I want to use long-form questions.
To assess higher-level student understanding, I decided to use three exams that each have 4-5 long-form questions, and yes, I’ve already written them. If you want to see them, or — better yet! — give me feedback on them, let me know! I don’t want to share them publicly, but here is an example that I plan to use on a practice exam:
Given what you know about how the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines work, support or refute the following claim: “mRNA-based vaccines can alter your DNA.” Your answer should include a description of what happens inside a cell after vaccine exposure.
To answer this question, students need to have a firm grasp both on how the mRNA vaccine works, but also on the flow of information from DNA —> RNA —> protein, and they should be able to explain how these processes occur in physical places inside the cell. mRNA from the vaccine never enters the nucleus, and there is no mechanism in humans for converting RNA to DNA to be inserted into the genome.
Note that I don’t actually care if students know about how mRNA-vaccines work; this question is just a way to probe the students’ understanding of the flow of information from DNA to protein.
If you see a glaring weak point here, I do too: How will I grade students’ long-form answers? I have some concrete answers, and some not-yet-clear answers. Concrete: I’ll grade the exams anonymously, using an EMRN rubric, and students will be able to submit revisions with no grade penalty after receiving their grades/feedback. Not-yet-clear: how I will communicate my expectations to students. With long-form, integrative essay questions, if I set clear expectations that an A-level answer will include [list of vocabulary words] [reference to X process] [etc] then it becomes less of an integrative question and more of a fill-in-the blank question. Yet, I know I need to communicate what level of scope I’m looking for. Still working on this. I’ve recruited a couple former students to answer a couple questions so I can see what types of responses I might get, as a way to better design the questions.
Two types of assessment for two levels of learning
My long form exams are designed to probe deep, integrative understanding. But I also want students to have a way to demonstrate learning in lower Bloom’s level contexts. So, in addition to the three essay-style exams, students will take online quizzes every other week to assess their content-level understanding and development of discrete competencies. The online quizzes will be graded automatically using our LMS, so they will use primarily multiple-choice, matching, and fill-in-the-blank question formats.
Learning through iteration
One of the things I’ve learned from the Alternative Grading Community is the importance of reattempts without penalty. Learning takes time, and we shouldn’t penalize students who take longer to learn. Building reattempts into my assessments is an important part of how I help my students learn, and an important part of how I structure my course to improve equity.
How do I build reattempts into each type of assessment?
Long form exams
After receiving feedback and grades on their exams, students will have the option to submit revisions for a regrade with no penalty. I’ve built homework days into the schedule to give them time to work on revisions. In addition to submitting their revised answers, students will also be required to submit a video of themselves explaining why they made the revisions they did, and what resources they consulted when making their revisions. I’ve never before offered revisions in a course, so I definitely feel like I’m winging this part of the course.
Online quizzes
Students will complete an online quiz every other Friday; the following Tuesday in class, students will work in teams to complete a short (5-7 question) quiz of the most commonly missed questions using immediate-feedback scratch off cards (for no points). Additionally, subsequent online quizzes will be semi-cumulative: 20% of questions cover material from previous quizzes. Finally, at the end of the semester, students will complete a cumulative final exam that covers similar content from the online quizzes. Thus, for some of the content, students are assessed 4 times: on the original online quiz, in the team quiz in class, on subsequent online quizzes, and on the final cumulative exam. Because I will be using Multiple Grading Schemes, earlier mistakes on online quizzes won’t necessarily hurt students’ final grade. More on Grading in Part 4.
Next up in Part 3: How I used the long form exams (that I already wrote!) to design the course schedule.