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Abstract Self-report assessments are used frequently in higher education to assess a variety of constructs, including attitudes, opinions, knowledge, and competence. Systems thinking is an example of one competence often measured using self-report assessments where individuals answer several questions about their perceptions of their own skills, habits, or daily decisions. In this study, we define systems thinking as the ability to see the world as a complex interconnected system where different parts can influence each other, and the interrelationships determine system outcomes. An alternative, less-common, assessment approach is to measure skills directly by providing a scenario about an unstructured problem and evaluating respondents’ judgment or analysis of the scenario (scenario-based assessment). This study explored the relationships between engineering students’ performance on self-report assessments and scenario-based assessments of systems thinking, finding that there were no significant relationships between the two assessment techniques. These results suggest that there may be limitations to using self-report assessments as a method to assess systems thinking and other competencies in educational research and evaluation, which could be addressed by incorporating alternative formats for assessing competence. Future work should explore these findings further and support the development of alternative assessment approaches.
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Criteria for collapsing rating scale responses: A case study of the CLASS
Assessments of students’ attitudes and beliefs often rely on questions with rating scales that ask students the extent to which they agree or disagree with a statement. Unlike traditional physics problems with a single correct answer, rating scale questions often have a spectrum of 5 or more responses, none of which are correct. Researchers have found that responses on rating scale items can generally be treated as continuous and that unless there is good evidence to do otherwise, response categories should not be collapsed [1–3]. We discuss two potential reasons for collapsing response categories (lack of use and redundancy) and how to empirically test for them. To illustrate these methods, we use them on the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey. We found that students used all the response categories on the CLASS but that three of them were potentially redundant. This led us to conclude that the CLASS should be scored on a 5-point or 3-point scale, rather than the 2-point scale recommended by the instrument developers [4]. More broadly, we recommend the judicious use of data manipulations when scoring assessments and retaining all response categories unless there is a strong rational for collapsing them.
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- PAR ID:
- 10192528
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2019 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2019.pr.Van_Dusen
