GenBio-MAPS: A Programmatic Assessment to Measure Student Understanding of Vision and Change Core Concepts across General Biology Programs

Abstract

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 General Biology–Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science (GenBio-MAPS) assessment as a tool to measure student understanding of the core concepts at key time points in a biology degree program. Data from more than 5000 students at 20 institutions reveal that this instrument distinguishes students at different stages of the curriculum, with an upward trend of increased performance at later time points. Despite this trend, we identify several concepts that advanced students find challenging. Linear mixed-effects models reveal that gender, race/ethnicity, English-language status, and first-generation status predict overall performance and that different institutions show distinct performance profiles across time points. GenBio-MAPS represents the first programmatic assessment for general biology programs that spans the breadth of biology and aligns with the Vision and Change core concepts. This instrument provides a needed tool to help departments monitor student learning and guide curricular transformation centered on the teaching of core concepts.

Multiple-true-false questions reveal more thoroughly the complexity of student thinking than multiple-choice questions: a Bayesian item response model comparison

“…While it is possible that they would have different question properties, many of these MC-based instruments use questions where distractors are not mutually exclusive from the correct answer, and so we predict that they would similarly overestimate the degree to which students have question-level mastery. In light of this limitation, several recent RBAs have elected to use the MTF format (Couch et al, 2015(Couch et al, , 2019Semsar et al, 2019;Summers et al, 2018). In this context, the MTF format helps improve content validity through its ability to cover a broad…”

Resources for Teaching and Assessing the Vision and Change Biology Core Concepts

“…Each of these assessment tools followed a similar set of design principles and is presented to students as restricted-response, multiple T/F, or likely-unlikely items designed to assess the conceptual understanding of a large number of students outside class. There are four separate instruments: general biology (GenBio-MAPS; Couch et al, 2019), molecular biology (Molecular Biology Capstone Assessment, MCBA; Couch et al, 2015), physiology (Phys-MAPS; Semsar et al, 2019), and ecology/evolution (EcoEvo-MAPS; Summers et al, 2018). All of the Bio-MAPS instruments are freely available and can be administered through an online web portal at http://cperl.lassp.cornell.edu/bio-maps (Smith et al, 2019).…”

“…The GenBio-MAPS assessment (Couch et al, 2019) was designed as a general biology departmental-level assessment aligned directly with the BioCore Guide (Brownell et al, 2014). It consists of 39 questions; each question consists of a scenario and four to five T/F statements to test student understanding of FIGURE 7.…”

“…The instruments can also be used to measure progress at 2-year colleges by administering them at the beginning and end of an introductory biology series or at the beginning and end of a specialized set of courses (e.g., anatomy and physiology). Data suggest that students show greater understanding of the core concepts at more advanced levels compared with introductory levels (Summers et al, 2018;Couch et al, 2019;Semsar et al, 2019). Student performance on these assessments could be used to help departments identify the extent to which students learn the core concepts in introductory or upper-level courses and help departments assess their proficiency in teaching the core concepts over the duration of a degree.…”

From panic to pedagogy: Using online active learning to promote inclusive instruction in ecology and evolutionary biology courses.

“…However, of particular relevance to this discussion are two specific Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science (Bio-MAPS tools. First, the general biology (GenBio-MAPS) tool can be used at the introductory level (Couch et al, 2019). Second, the specifically targeted towards Ecology and Evolution EcoEvo-MAPS tool can be used at an upper division level (Summers et al, 2018).…”