Uncovering students' incorrect ideas about foundational concepts for biochemistry

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary data on how an assessment instrument with a unique structure can be used to identify common incorrect ideas from prior coursework at the beginning of a biochemistry course, and to determine whether these ideas have changed by the end of the course. The twenty-one multiple-choice items address seven different concepts, with a parallel structure for distractors across each set of items to capture consistent incorrect responses. For the current study, the instrument was administered as a pre-test and post-test in majors level biochemistry courses, and the results from two different groups are presented. These results indicated that students performed better on the post-test, resulting in positive mean gain scores for each concept. The structure of the instrument allows data analysis that helped uncover persistent incorrect ideas for some of the concepts, including bond energy and protein alpha helix structure, even after a semester of instruction in biochemistry. The persistent incorrect idea for the protein alpha helix structure uncovered by this assessment has not been reported before in the literature. These results confirm the need to use a robust diagnostic instrument to assess students' understanding of basic concepts at the beginning of the semester, but also stress the need to assess students near the end of the course to gain insight on the effectiveness of instruction. Since each group of students is different, biochemistry instructors are encouraged to use the instrument to identify problems with their own students' incoming ideas rather than rely on published results to inform instruction. In addition to providing assistance for instructors of biochemistry in planning targeted instructional interventions, we anticipate that data collected from this instrument can also be used to identify potential modifications for prerequisite courses.

Sustaining the development and implementation of student‐centered teaching nationally: The importance of a community of practice

“…Participants could brainstorm ideas, develop an activity, and get feedback from experienced biochemists all in the space of a few days. Classroom materials developed during the workshops have been published [15] and multiple choice questions written during workshops formed the foundation of a new assessment instrument for biochemistry that has been used nationally and internationally [26,27]. Since participants also spent ample time-sharing ideas during unstructured free time, additional materials, including answer keys, facilitation plans, and test banks, were also produced and have been widely distributed.…”

“…The questions were reviewed by other collaborators for clarity and appropriate focus. This effort resulted in a useful conceptual gains question bank of over 80 questions, which was subsequently used to prepare an effective assessment tool for project participants and others [26,27].…”

“…A substantial part of the second CCW was devoted to collaborative development of a bank of multiple choice questions, a subset of which was used to create a 21-question multiple choice assessment tool, currently being used to measure changes in student understanding of concepts from general chemistry and biology before and after completing biochemistry [26,27]. Prior to the CCW, a group of experts identified important concepts from general chemistry and biology which were likely to be important for learning biochemistry and common incorrect ideas that students have about these concepts.…”

Lessons Learned from Collaborations in Chemistry Assessment across Universities: Challenges in Transfer and Scale

“…A second area of focus was on developing ways to better assess students' approaches to learning, as evidenced by the use of an instrument measuring key concepts (15)(16)(17) that include the misconceptions students may have on these complex topics (18,19), reasoning concepts using the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT) and Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) (20), as well as the use of IMMEX (21,22). The goal of using these measures was to find a way to better understand students' problem solving strategies and key areas of misconceptions, to help instructors have the data they need to support students and target instruction more effectively.…”

Conceitos alternativos sobre radicais livres: origens, prevalência e intervenções

“…A Bioquímica é uma disciplina difícil para muitos estudantes, pois depende de muitos conceitos abstratos que não podem ser relacionados às experiências do cotidiano (Villafañe et al, 2011). E não é diferente com relação aos radicais livres.…”