Focusing on Science Practices: Assessing Levels of Student Performance

This project aims to serve the national interest by helping undergraduate chemistry students become more proficient in science practices and skills. For students to move from being introduced to a particular science practice to demonstrating proficiency with the skill, each practice needs to be experienced multiple times with varying levels of complexity. While the importance of engaging students in science practices is well documented, mechanisms for instructors to assess these practices and to provide regular feedback to students are not. This project is designed to enhance current efforts to increase student engagement and development of scientific practices. In addition to knowledge about how undergraduate chemistry students engage in science practices while completing course tasks and areas where additional curriculum development is needed, the project team will develop resources that instructors can use as a foundation for developing task specific grading rubrics and that can be shared with students to provide guidance as to expectations for engaging in science practices. This project will (1) characterize student behaviors and products when completing tasks designed to elicit evidence of science practices, and (2) generate assessment resources that can be used by instructors to document levels of performance and provide actionable feedback to students. It is important that assessment and associated feedback provided to students focus on improving performance, be understandable, and be clearly linked to the desired learning outcomes. This project will employ a qualitative study design to characterize the ways in which students engage in science practices and an evidence-centered design process to create instructor resources. Evidence of student engagement in scientific practices will come from observations of students working in the laboratory and student work, such as laboratory reports, quizzes, examinations, and presentations. Information will be collected from course instructors regarding their expectations of the ways in which students will engage in science practices for the different experiments as well as any materials provided to students to support or assess their engagement in science practices. To investigate the development of science practice skills across the undergraduate chemistry curriculum, data will be collected in introductory, organic, and upper-level chemistry laboratory courses. The utility of the instructor resources for developing task specific grading rubrics will be established through interviews and piloting with chemistry instructors in courses across the curriculum. As professional organizations increase their expectations for the development and assessment of science practices, the results of this work have the potential to assist instructors in their adoption and ongoing modification of instructional approaches that are explicitly designed to help students develop these key skills. Characterizing the ways in which students engage in science practices during course-related tasks and developing resources to aid chemistry instructors in their assessment is expected to contribute to increasing the emphasis of these skills and enhancing achievement in chemistry programs. Project findings will be relevant to many different audiences involved in chemistry education and have the potential to impact hundreds of faculty members and thousands of students. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.