USING CONCEPTESTS IN MULTIPLE INTRODUCTORY COURSES

Many geoscience educators want to improve student achievement, increase attendance, reduce student attrition, and produce a more active, student-centered learning environment. Physics, chemistry, and astronomy instructors have successfully achieved these goals in introductory courses through the use of conceptests. Conceptests feature questions that focus on one key concept and are used for formative assessment consistent with an instructor’s major learning goals for a lesson. These questions have a multiple-choice format featuring one correct answer and reasonable distractor answers that reflect student misconceptions. The instructor polls the class for answers from students both before and after short, peer-group discussions. Based on students’ answers, the instructor may choose to provide additional instruction on the concept or proceed to the next topic. As measured by comments on student evaluations, students’ responses to the use of conceptests have been positive.

We present more than fifty examples of conceptest questions that can be used to rapidly assess student learning in introductory geoscience courses. Instructors report on the use of these questions in a range of courses at a variety of institutions. These questions have been used in large introductory general education courses for non-majors at open enrollment institutions and smaller physical geology classes suitable for majors at private colleges. Student responses to conceptest questions are identified by a range of methods, from raising a hand to using electronic personal response systems. Where appropriate, a simple assessment instrument was used to record student responses and rate the success of individual conceptests so that other instructors have benchmarks for comparison for student learning in their own courses.