Clicker questions are a commonly used active learning technique that stimulates student interactions to help advance understanding of key concepts. Clicker questions are often administered with an initial vote, peer discussion, and a second vote, followed by broader classroom explanation. While clickers can promote learning, some studies have…

Biology instructors use concept assessments in their courses to gauge student understanding of important disciplinary ideas. Instructors can choose to administer concept assessments based on participation (i.e., lower stakes) or the correctness of responses (i.e., higher stakes), and students can complete the assessment in an in-class or…

The General Biology-Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science (GenBio-MAPS) assessment measures student understanding of the "Vision and Change" core concepts at the beginning, middle, and end of undergraduate biology degree programs. Assessment coordinators typically administer this instrument as a low-stakes assignment for which…

The "Vision and Change" report called for the biology community to mobilize around teaching the core concepts of biology. This essay describes a collection of resources developed by several different groups that can be used to respond to the report's call to transform undergraduate education at both the individual course and departmental…

Understanding metabolic function requires knowledge of the dynamics, interdependence, and regulation of metabolic networks. However, multiple professional societies have recognized that most undergraduate biochemistry students acquire only a surface-level understanding of metabolism. We hypothesized that guiding students through interactive…

Instructors use a variety of online formative assessment (FA) activities to support learning outside class. Previous studies have revealed barriers for students in online courses, but little is known about the barriers students experience when completing online FA assignments. Understanding these barriers to access is critical to fostering more…

Ensuring undergraduate students become proficient in relating protein structure to biological function has important implications. With current two-dimensional (2D) methods of teaching, students frequently develop misconceptions, including that proteins contain a lot of empty space, that bond angles for different amino acids can rotate equally,…

The "Vision and Change" report provides a nationally agreed upon framework of core concepts that undergraduate biology students should master by graduation. While identifying these concepts was an important first step, departments also need ways to measure the extent to which students understand these concepts. Here, we present the…

Background: The Scientific Teaching (ST) pedagogical framework encompasses many of the best practices recommended in the literature and highlighted in national reports. Understanding the growth and impact of ST requires instruments to accurately measure the extent to which practitioners implement ST in their courses. Researchers have typically…

Background: Within undergraduate science courses, instructors often assess student thinking using closed-ended question formats, such as multiple-choice (MC) and multiple-true-false (MTF), where students provide answers with respect to predetermined response options. While MC and MTF questions both consist of a question stem followed by a series…

We describe the development of a new, freely available, online, programmatic-level assessment tool, Measuring Achievement and Progress in Science in Physiology, or Phys-MAPS (http://cperl.lassp.cornell.edu/bio-maps). Aligned with the conceptual frameworks of Core Principles of Physiology, and Vision and Change Core Concepts, Phys-MAPS can be used…

The instructional practices used in introductory college courses often differ dramatically from those used in high school courses, and dissatisfaction with these practices is cited by students as a prominent reason for leaving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. To better characterize the transition to college course…

Understanding the relationship between molecular structure and function represents an important goal of undergraduate life sciences. Although evidence suggests that handling physical models supports gains in student understanding of structure-function relationships, such models have not been widely implemented in biochemistry classrooms.…

A new assessment tool, Ecology and Evolution--Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science or EcoEvo-MAPS, measures student thinking in ecology and evolution during an undergraduate course of study. EcoEvo-MAPS targets foundational concepts in ecology and evolution and uses a novel approach that asks students to evaluate a series of…

Assessments represent an important component of undergraduate courses because they affect how students interact with course content and gauge student achievement of course objectives. To make decisions on assessment design, instructors must understand the affordances and limitations of available question formats. Here, we use a crossover…