UNC Faculty Land $1 Million Grant to Develop Assessment Tool
2020年5月27日
The 国家科学基金会 awarded two 北科罗拉多大学 faculty a $1.077 million grant to improve teaching in college-level environmental science 课程.
Assistant Professor Chelsie幕 and Professor Steven 安德森 will spend the next three years developing a machine-learning program that will assess students’ understanding of the connections among food-energy-water concepts in their classes. 他们的目标是 to help instructors make evidence-based decisions on how to best test their students’ 对复杂概念的理解.
上图: Chelsie幕 giving a lecture to students in one of her previous Introduction to 环境研究(ENST 100)班.
“In all of education, our main objective is for students to learn, and there are lots of different ways to teach so students can learn, as well as tests to see if learning is happening — that’s the piece that’s difficult,” Romulo said. “为了评估， we need tools for assessment; we need to test instructors and students together to see if what the instructor is doing is effective.”
Traditional testing methods, which form what are known as concept inventories, differ from multiple-choice questions, to short answer to essay, so Romulo and 安德森 are hoping the computer program they’re creating will identify patterns of understanding 基于测试结果.
安德森 共同开发了一个类似的评估 to evaluate teaching and learning methods in geological sciences.
"Our work 15 years ago on the Geoscience Concept Inventory showed us that it was very
difficult and time-consuming to make a multiple-choice test that was both statistically
有效的 
and reliable, but we were able to accomplish that by administering it to more than
4000名学生，”安德森说. "For our current project, there are additional challenges
in scoring more complex test questions, such as short answer questions, and that’s
where the Michigan State group comes in: they will apply artificial intelligence to
the grading of our new test and questions so that we can quickly grade these and move
toward making a concept inventory that will give us results that are research grade."
The UNC researchers will collaborate with 10 other higher-educational institutions across the country to gather an assortment of test questions given to students, as well as collecting the students’ answers.
“We’re trying to get a broad array of colleges from all over the nation, such as minority-serving 以及研究机构，”她说. “It’s a good idea to have a lot of representation.”
上图: The universities that are participating in Romulo and 安德森's
research for the concept inventory devleopment.
Over the course of the grant’s three years, Romulo hopes to create a larger concept inventory for the food-energy-water connections and involve more universities.
“There’s a huge need for this, which is why we received the funding,” Romulo said. “I’m excited to work with these other universities, especially with COVID-19 and teaching 在线. There are lots of opportunities for us to work with other universities and have that synergy of sharing activities and assignments across the board.”
Romulo discusses the Introduction to 环境al Studies class and the importance of Liberal 艺术 Core curriculum in the following video:
Amanda Manzanares, a UNC doctoral student, will assist Romulo and 安德森. Manzanares” 硕士论文 analyzed students’ understanding on basic geology topics, similar to Romulo and 安德森’s 在NSF的资助下即将进行的研究. She’s starting the 教育al Psychology Ph.D. program this fall with UNC Associate Professor 莫莉詹姆逊, Ph.D.，教授 凯文·普, Ph.D.作为她的联合顾问.
“我很高兴能与dr. Romulo and 安德森 on this project," Manzanares said. "While completing my master’s research at UNC, I learned that it is important that educators have a better understanding of the initial knowledge state of their students. Instructors can then use this information to structure their classroom activities to help students build a strong foundational knowledge that they can use to learn 更复杂的概念.”
博天堂官方网站奖项
- 项目名称: Improving Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
- 格兰特奖: 三年100万美元
- 资助机构: 国家科学基金会
- 研究人员: 首席研究员 切尔西·罗慕洛博士.D.，副教授 UNC’s Geography, GIS, and 可持续性 Program; co-principal investigator 史蒂夫·安德森博士.D., a professor of Earth Sciences at UNC; co-principal investigator Shirley Vincent, Ph.D., a consultant and former director of 教育 研究 and Evaluation for the National Council for Science and the 环境. 其他研究援助正在进行中 provided by UNC doctoral students Amanda Manzanares Brian Tucker, 教育 Studies, and Lee Arakawa, Sport and Exercise Science.
- 值得注意的是: 与 Automated Assessment of Constructed Response Lab at Michigan State University, the researchers are also collaborating with the Science 教育 Resource Center at Carleton College in Minnesota to help evaluate the assessment tool and conduct outreach.
——Katie Corder著
