For example, it is difficult to expect a project designed for innovative inquiry based learning strategies to improve student test scores, if the tests remain traditional, multiple choice instruments that do not reflect the inquiry based strategies.
Changes in student understanding as measured by the ACORNS open-response question broadly agreed with the results from the multiple-choice instrument.
The results we described support the idea that measuring knowledge and comprehension of fundamental principles of evolution by natural selection with a multiple-choice instrument, such as the CINS, only provides a partial picture of students' understanding of the process of evolution.
In addition to comparing students' total correct scores on the pre and post-test, we assessed students' misconceptions on the pre and post-test multiple-choice instrument by examining their selection of the distractors (incorrect responses) that we had classified as expressing one of our target misconceptions.
We began the instrument construction process by writing, testing, and revising a multiple-choice instrument, the GeDI-Draft 1.
We designed a multiple-choice instrument intended to assess students according to a subset of those course learning outcomes.
The TOSLS is a freely available, multiple-choice instrument that can be readily administered and scored in large-enrollment Gen Ed courses.
One approach is a return to an assessment tool format that has been developed previously by science education researchers, namely, the "two-tier" multiple-choice instrument (for examples, see Tamir, 1971; Treagust, 1988).
The 36-item multiple-choice instrument used to assess students' content-oriented proficiency was developed by the authors to be in alignment with the QCS course objectives and practices and to require use of a range of cognitive levels (from comprehension to application, analysis, and evaluation) on the part of the successful test-taker.
[Abstract available: www.informaworld.com/smpp/content∼db=all∼content=a912566870] Tsui and Treagust document the development and implementation of a two-tier multiple-choice instrument for diagnosing high school students' knowledge about genetics (tier 1) as well as their explanations of that knowledge ("reasoning," tier 2).
