A rubric for experimental design (RED) was developed to measure undergraduate biology students' knowledge of and diagnose their difficulties with experimental design.

Annwesa Dasgupta is a postdoctoral researcher with the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Her research focuses on identification and assessment of STEM and computational thinking competencies at the K-2 level. AbstractIntegrated learning is fundamental in the current era of STEM education. However, articulating evidence of learning in such complex learning environments can be a challenge. This is especially true in elementary grades where developmentally-appropriate practices are not fully defined and understood yet. One of the newest additions to the integrated STEM discussion is computational thinking (i.e., STEM+C). The purpose of this research is to explore computational thinking practices in one Kindergarten classroom during the implementation of an integrated unit. Student artifacts were collected, deidentified, and analyzed for understanding of computational thinking. Using artifact analysis, student worksheets and prototypes designed were examined for evidence of computational thinking competencies prompted by the STEM+C lesson units. This paper provides evidence of how kindergarten students engage with computational thinking through analysis of student work. Students successfully convert an existing color pattern into letters but have difficulty writing a complete pattern with repeatable units. Students also reveal difficulty with pattern abstraction as evident from prototypes designs that mismatched with their selected patterns design.

An assessment was developed to measure student and expert ability to design experiments in an authentic biology research context. The design process involved providing background knowledge and prompting the use of visuals to discriminate a range of abilities. The process shows potential for informing assessment design in other disciplines.

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He completed his PhD degree majoring in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Engineering Education and minoring in Educational Psychology as well as an MS degree in Petroleum Engineering at Texas Tech University. He also obtained an MEd degree from Clemson University. His research interests focus on teacher education and students learning issues within Engineering Education/Pedagogy and Computational Thinking/Pedagogy field of studies. He received national and international recognitions including an Early Career Researcher award from European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) and a Jhumki Basu Scholar award from National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). In addition, he is one of two scholarship recipients awarded by NARST to attend the ESERA summer research program inČeské Budějovice, Czech Republic in 2016. He can be reached at