Two-Year Community: Using Formative Assessment to Improve Microscope Skills Among Urban Community College General Biology I Lab Students

Keller, Charles

doi:10.2505/4/jcst17_046_03_11

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Urban community college students often leave such courses, subsequently setting them up for lower levels of achievement. 3 Successful experiences are necessary to sustain educational progress, 4 and anatomy remains a vital part of life-science education. 5 In dissection, classroom students often study only major organ structures and typically dispose of specimens without examining their structure at a cell level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation of microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation for enhancing STEM and undergraduate education

2018

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Microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation (MUSE) is investigated as a means to enhance curricula and education in the life sciences based on simplicity of use, the incorporation of inexpensive hardware, and the simplest methods of tissue preparation. Ultraviolet excitation in effect replaces tissue sectioning because it penetrates only a few micrometers below the tissue surface at the single cell level, preventing the generation of out-of-focus light. Although tissue autofluorescence may be used, image quality and content can be enhanced by a brief immersion in a solution of nontoxic fluorescent dyes that selectively highlight different cellular compartments. Safe mixed-dye powder combinations have been developed to provide students who have minimal lab proficiencies with a one-step tissue staining process for rapid tissue preparation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation of microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation for enhancing STEM and undergraduate education

2018

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“…For example, instructors at one community college added additional formative assessments focused on developing students' microscopy skills (Keller, 2017). This supported their diverse and academically challenged students, who traditionally struggled with this skill needed for future courses in their discipline (Keller, 2017). These studies have found there are an increased variety of assessment formats in use.…”

Section: College Instructors' Assessment Beliefs and Practicesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…They now use more varied assessments, including student questioning strategies such as clicker questions, to scaffold learning (Holme et al, 2010;Keller, 2017;Skinner, 2009). For example, instructors at one community college added additional formative assessments focused on developing students' microscopy skills (Keller, 2017). This supported their diverse and academically challenged students, who traditionally struggled with this skill needed for future courses in their discipline (Keller, 2017).…”

Section: College Instructors' Assessment Beliefs and Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While research has begun exploring assessment practices and beliefs of instructors at community colleges through broad survey methods (Huber, 1998;Keller, 2017), relatively little work has studied the assessment practices of community college science instructors. Further, previous studies have found contrasting assessment practices of community college instructors with some instructors focusing primarily on objective exams of content knowledge and others more likely to use research papers and projects to assess critical thinking .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Because they care : rural community college instructors' beliefs and practices

Birt¹

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Community college instructors are influential in the lives of rural students, and they have key insights on the education of those students. Studies are needed to identify ways to support these rural students, who represent an important source of political and socioeconomic diversity for their communities and when transferring to universities. This multiple manuscript dissertation examines the instructional and assessment beliefs and practices of three experienced rural community college instructors. Using multiple case study methods and grounded in the curriculum development model, I found that the rural instructors tended to use more student-centered instructional methods. They considered students' future careers, acted as an explainer and promoted group work. The instructors held various beliefs about the focus and adaptability of assessment which manifested in their use of reflection to inform future assessments and instruction. The results of this empirical research informed the derivation of four CARE principles to help instructors support rural students in post-secondary biology classrooms. This dissertation concludes that instructors and researchers need to reconsider the common characterization of rural students as deficient and instead capitalize on their strengths.

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“…Formative assessment may be defined as "encompassing all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged" [8, pp.7-8]. Educators have frequently used formative assessment in STEM classes to assess students' knowledge of specific academic content and/or skills on an ongoing basis [9,10,11]. These assessments are typically designed to examine how students are meeting pre-determined learning goals, rather than allowing students themselves to help determine these goals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participatory Action Research (PAR) as Formative Assessment of a STEM Summer Bridge Program

Tripathy

Chandra

Reichlen

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings

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received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1989. Her doctoral research was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation grant, and utilized ethnographic fieldwork in rural Bihar, India, to analyze the politics and artistic development of a local dance form. From 1995-2007, Tripathy taught behavioral sciences at Middlesex Community College (MCC), where she was an active participant and researcher in MCC's extensive community service-learning program.

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Two-Year Community: Using Formative Assessment to Improve Microscope Skills Among Urban Community College General Biology I Lab Students

Cited by 8 publications

References 12 publications

Adaptation of microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation for enhancing STEM and undergraduate education

Adaptation of microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation for enhancing STEM and undergraduate education

Because they care : rural community college instructors' beliefs and practices

Participatory Action Research (PAR) as Formative Assessment of a STEM Summer Bridge Program

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