BioVEDA Curriculum: An Approach to Link Conceptual and Quantitative Understanding of Variation During Experimental Design and Data Analysis

Paired Multiple-Choice Questions Reveal Students’ Incomplete Statistical Thinking about Variation during Data Analysis

“…Instruction that presents calculating mathematical expressions of variability in data sets as routine procedures that must be carried out as part of data analysis may push students to prioritize this type of calculation-oriented or procedural view of mathematical expressions over deep conceptual understanding. Adjusting instruction such that students must coordinate mathematical procedures with the concepts that they represent (e.g., by inventing their own mathematical procedures to represent a statistical concept) may be one strategy to foster deeper conceptual understanding ( 55 – 58 ).…”

Teasing apart the impacts of curriculum and professional development on teaching assistants’ teaching practices

“…The content covered by the Intervention curriculum complemented the laboratory exercises specified in the Traditional curriculum. A detailed explanation of the Intervention curriculum is published elsewhere [ 52 ]. Table 3 summarizes features of the Traditional and Intervention curricula.…”

“…Elements shown to be effective for K-12 teachers and TAs (modelling of teaching practices, structured opportunities for TAs to reflect on the modelled teaching practices, and a direct link to classroom content) were included in this PD intervention [ 18 , 21 , 31 , 36 ]. This PD intervention is explicitly linked to a companion curriculum intervention consisting of five short (30-minute) tasks that supplement regular laboratory exercises in an undergraduate introductory biology laboratory course [ 52 ]. These tasks are designed to guide student inquiry and promote TAs’ use of student-centered teaching practices to facilitate the activities.…”

Improving Students’ Understanding of Biological Variation in Experimental Design and Analysis through a Short Model-Based Curricular Intervention

“…The BioVEDA curriculum is designed to allow undergraduate students in a biology laboratory context to develop a model of the connections between the sources of variation in biological investigations and quantitative expressions of variation throughout experimental design and analysis (described in detail in Dewey et al, 2020). The modeling that students engage in shares attributes with both statistical and scientific modeling.…”

“…We have previously described a curricular intervention (Biological Variation in Experimental Design and Analysis [BioVEDA] curriculum) designed for introductory undergraduate biology laboratory courses. The BioVEDA curriculum uses a model-based approach to enable students to identify sources of variation in an experiment, integrate that knowledge with statistical expressions of variation, and use their knowledge to inform experimental design and data analysis (Dewey et al, 2020). This current work describes the impact of that curriculum on students' understanding of variation in the context of experimental design and analysis.…”