Janet Casagrand, PhD
Instructor
Inegrative Physiology
University of Colorado at Boulder
UCB 354
Boulder, CO 80309
303-492-4812
Janet.Casagrand@colorado.edu
Abstract
The central question I plan to explore in my research is, How can educators determine whether the introduction of new techniques in the classroom, designed to improve student learning (for example, use of concept-based clicker questions and homework problems), actually improves the level of student learning, especially a better conceptual level of understanding, when pre/post data are not available? I have been using concept-based clicker and homework questions the past few semesters in my upper division core science course to improve student learning of material, and now have a sense that I am able to test students at a higher level, but would like to investigate this hypothesis. Although the average exam scores have not changed since I introduced concept-based clicker questions and homework problems, I believe I have increased the overall level of difficulty of the exams and that students are learning more than before. I plan to classify exam questions according to their level of cognitive difficulty (using Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives for the cognitive domain), from a representative year before and after introduction of these techniques, to assess whether the overall cognitive difficulty of the exams has, in fact, changed, and whether students are now demonstrating a better conceptual understanding of material. This approach may serve as a useful model for other faculty who wish to gauge the efficacy of new teaching approaches, but lack data from before changes were made in a course.