RTRES Consulting, Knoxville, TN 37934.
National Institute for STEM Evaluation and Research (NISER), National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS), University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2020 Mar;19(1):ar6. doi: 10.1187/cbe.18-10-0216.
We describe the development and initial validity assessment of the 20-item BioCalculus Assessment (BCA), with the objective of comparing undergraduate life science students' understanding of calculus concepts in different courses with alternative emphases (with and without focus on biological applications). The development process of the BCA included obtaining input from a large network of scientists and educators as well as students in calculus and biocalculus courses to accumulate evidential support of the instrument's content validity and response processes of test takers. We used the Rasch model to examine the internal structure of scores from students who have experienced calculus instruction in the two methods. The analysis involved three populations (Calculus 1, Calculus 2, and Biocalculus) for which the Calc 1 and Calc 2 students were not exposed to calculus concepts in a life science setting, while the Biocalculus students were presented concepts explicitly with a life science emphasis. Overall, our findings indicate that the BCA has reasonable validity properties, providing a diagnostic tool to assess the relative learning success and calculus comprehension of undergraduate biology majors from alternative methods of instruction that do or do not emphasize life science examples.
我们描述了 20 项生物微积分评估（BCA）的开发和初步有效性评估，旨在比较具有不同重点（有和没有生物应用重点）的课程中学生对微积分概念的理解。BCA 的开发过程包括从微积分和生物微积分课程的大量科学家和教育工作者以及学生那里获得投入，以积累该工具内容有效性和应试者反应过程的证据支持。我们使用 Rasch 模型来检验经历过两种方法微积分教学的学生的分数的内部结构。该分析涉及三个群体（微积分 1、微积分 2 和生物微积分），其中微积分 1 和微积分 2 的学生没有在生命科学环境中接触过微积分概念，而生物微积分的学生则明确地介绍了具有生命科学重点的概念。总的来说，我们的发现表明 BCA 具有合理的有效性特征，为评估来自不同教学方法的大学生物专业的相对学习成功和微积分理解提供了一种诊断工具，这些方法强调或不强调生命科学实例。
