| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 26, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 22, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 1726180 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Ellen Carpenter
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $475,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $565,565.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2019 = $90,565.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2550 NORTHWESTERN AVE # 1100 WEST LAFAYETTE IN US 47906-1332 (765)494-1055 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
915 West State St. West Lafayette IN US 47907-2054 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | IUSE |
| Primary Program Source: |
04001920DB NSF Education & Human Resource |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Calls for reforms at all levels of undergraduate teaching in STEM fields encourage students to be active participants in the process of science with inquiry and quantitative data analysis, interpretation and construction of graphs, and decision-making. But there is currently a dearth of research-backed tools and curriculum for teaching overarching skills involved in the scientific process, including generating testable hypotheses, experimental design, exploring and interpreting data, and making evidence-based arguments. This is especially true in the large introductory classes that constitute many students' first exposure to a scientific field in college. This project will build on a budding research base exploring where students have trouble with using graphs with and how they learn to construct graphs. It will expand this research base both in depth and breadth, using the GraphSmarts Research Tool, which was purposefully designed to reveal students' competence and difficulties with graph construction. Data collected in this project will transform this research tool into an invaluable teaching tool which can provide both students and instructors rapid feedback on areas of student difficulty with graphing in order to fine-tune instruction and student learning of this critical skill.
The intellectual merit of this project is to leverage the resources of an industry-academia partnership to establish a rich database of student graphing practices and to use those data to equip introductory biology students with a strong foundation of graphing knowledge and skills. On a recently completed cyberlearning project, the SimBiotic Software company explored ways of giving students authentic scientific problems (using simulations) in open-ended environments, but still providing immediate and specific feedback to both students and instructors that can help guide students towards a better understanding of how to design a meaningful experiment. The current project will build tools for another key piece of the scientific process - data display and interpretation, as evidenced through constructing graphs. The first objective is to expand and validate the existing GraphSmarts tool's ability to collect the full range of common graph construction competencies among undergraduate biology students. Qualitative data from student and instructor think-aloud graphing interviews will be critical in guiding the refinement of the GraphSmarts tool to enable future data collection in the absence of interviews. The second objective is to build an additional graphing scenario in ecology/evolution using the GraphSmarts tool and implement this scenario in diverse introductory biology settings to solidify the dataset of student competencies and difficulties with graph construction. Data from this project will be critical in guiding the development of GraphSmarts teaching modules to provide real-time feedback regarding graphing difficulties to both students and instructors and offer assessments to evaluate the development of student proficiency with graphing.
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project aimed to design an assessment to reveal how undergraduate biology students approach graphing biological data to test scientific predictions so that we can understand where students may need additional instructional support. Unlike many assessments of graphing competence, including multiple choice formats, the GraphSmarts assessment uses a combination graphing tasks, free-response, and some more closed-response-type questions to reveal what students know and do related to graphing. The GraphSmarts assessment that had three important elements: 1) it was grounded in a real-life biological context, 2) it was a digital assessment allowing for broad deployment by instructors across the United States and some autoscoring, and 3) it was an assessment of graphing that gathered information as students created graphs.
We used an assessment design approach called Evidence-Centered Design to guide design the GraphSmarts assessment. The first step was to identify and articulate a set of activities that students must do during graphing in biology to help focus and align parts of the assessment. We identified an authentic, real world biological context with which to pose a research question, hypothesis, and three predictions for students to test through graphing. We created a simple graphing interface with which students can graph the data provided to them as well as additional questions of varied types. The assessment went through several iterations of design and revision based on the results of interviews with students and instructors as well classroom testing with introductory biology students from a range of institution types. At the end of this process is a digital assessment of graphing competence that engages students graphing tasks as well as a set of additional questions around the graphing tasks that can be deployed nationwide. In total we can gain insight into a total of 9 areas of student competence and difficulties related to graphing.
In addition to the creation of an assessment we created analysis techniques that would allow for autoscoring of the graphs made by students and many questions in the assessments. We have been able to corroborate some of our previous findings from interviews and pen-and-paper graphing tasks as well as gain additional insights. The GraphSmarts assessment and our analytical tools will not only allow us to quickly gain insight into areas in which students do well and where they have difficulties, but we are poised to gather data more broadly. This broad data collection will enable us to have a better understanding of where students may differ based on institution type, year in school, and other demographics that could be important to understand how to better serve students in their development of graphing skills.
Last Modified: 12/29/2023
Modified by: Stephanie Gardner
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