Scientific teaching is based on the principle that teaching should be conducted with the same rigor as scientific research. Concept inventories are multiple choice questions which assess student understanding and expose misconceptions in key concepts in an area of study (Redish, 2000). Validated concept inventories (Adams and Wieman, 2010) are useful tools in scientific teaching for assessing student gains in conceptual understanding and for comparing the effectiveness of different teaching strategies. Although published concept inventories currently exist for a number of biological topics there are still many gaps. However, there is increasing consensus for the steps that should be taken to develop a validated concept inventory.
In this workshop you will participate in the process of developing concept inventories using as examples the challenging topics of meiosis and speciation. You will also work in small groups to come up with exercises that you can use with your students to improve their learning gains. In addition we will discuss ways to share concept inventories and the data they generate.
References
Adams W .and Wieman C. 2010. Development and validation of instruments to measure learning of expert-like thinking. International Journal of Science Education.
Redish, E. F. (2000). Discipline-based education and education research: the case of physics. J. Appl. Dev. Psychol. 21, 85–96
