Sponsor
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) Program under award 1650114 and the ECR Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (BCSER) Program under award 1937593.
Published In
Journal of Chemical Education
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
1-4-2021
Subjects
Chemistry -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Research, Chemistry -- Curriculum -- Assessment
Abstract
Identifying effective methods of assessment and developing robust assessments are key areas of research in chemistry education. This research is needed to evaluate instructional innovations and curricular reform. In this primer, we advocate for the use of a type of assessment, ordered multiple-choice (OMC), across postsecondary chemistry. OMC assessments are grounded in a developmental perspective, which treats students’ knowledge as developing in sophistication over time. This is in contrast to a dichotomous perspective, which asserts that students’ knowledge is either aligned or misaligned with scientifically accepted knowledge. By drawing on a developmental perspective, OMC assessments offer insights into student understanding that can be useful for informing instruction. To that end, this primer will overview OMC assessments, illustrate their development and evaluation in two chemistry contexts, and make an argument for their utility in the chemistry education community.
Rights
Copyright © 2021 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
This is the author’s version of a work that was subsequently published in The Journal of Chemical Education. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in The Journal of Chemical Education, 2021, and can be found online at: http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01121.
DOI
10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01121
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/34560
Citation Details
Published as Katherine Lazenby, Morgan E. Balabanoff, Nicole M. Becker, Alena Moon, and Jack Barbera, “From Ideas to Items: A Primer on the Development of Ordered Multiple-Choice Items for Investigating the Progression of Learning in Higher Education STEM,” Journal of Chemical Education, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01121.