Development and Application of a Novel Rasch-based Methodology for Evaluating Multi-Tiered Assessment Instruments: Validation and utilization of an undergraduate diagnostic test of the water cycle

How Do Undergraduate Students Conceptualize Acid–Base Chemistry? Measurement of a Concept Progression

“…While we may expect clearer distinctions between students at low and proficient ends of the scale on AB20 after they had completed general chemistry 2 and had begun organic chemistry 1, we recommend that the authors of future studies using the MCAB for quantitative measurement of students in the midst of their general chemistry sequence consider either rewriting or eliminating item AB20. Future users of the MCAB may also consider adding a confidence tier and requiring that a correct answer must include high confidence; this is a simple way to increase reliability and validity by making the scale less sensitive to guessing (Romine, Schaffer, & Barrow, ).…”

Testing validity inferences for Genetic Drift Inventory scores using Rasch modeling and item order analyses

“…Such an investigation might consider how the instrument functions if item responses were to be moderated by a paired question tier to indicate student confidence in their responses (cf. Romine, Schaffer and Barrow 2015) or examined for guessing using Rasch or IRT (e.g., Andrich, Marais and Humphry 2012; Boone et al 2014;Gershon 1992;Linacre 2017). Overall, while the GeDI now stands among the more robustly evaluated evolution instruments, additional work remains to comprehensively characterize the validity and reliability of inferences generated by this (and many other) evolution education instrument(s).…”

Water systems understandings: a framework for designing instruction and considering what learners know about water

“…24,25 Students often hold misconceptions or alternate conceptions relative to the cycle just presented and these misconceptions have potential to interfere with their understanding of accurate explanations for the cycling of water into and out of the atmosphere. 1 The concept of a cycle can be problematic for Overview wires.wiley.com/water students; Agelidou et al 26 noted that students often perceive natural cycles as based in time (e.g., life cycles or the cycling of seasons) rather than the movement of matter as indicated in the water cycle. Henriques 27 noted that students studying the water cycle must have an understanding of the properties of water and the heat exchanges between Earth and the sun.…”

“…Water is critical to human existence, and questions associated with access to and quality of water pose some of the major challenges facing society in the 21st century. Important issues such as weather and climate cannot be adequately understood or explained without a basic scientific understanding of the water cycle and the ability of water to transmit heat . Therefore, understanding the dynamic nature of water systems is becoming increasingly important as many nations experience water scarcity resulting from multiple factors including drought and pollution with the potential to rapidly degrade both surface and groundwater stores .…”