Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI): A diagnostic tool for revealing
student thinking
Article
Klymkowsky, Michael W, Underwood, Sonia M, Garvin-Doxas, R Kathleen. (2010). Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI): A diagnostic tool for revealing
student thinking
.
Klymkowsky, Michael W, Underwood, Sonia M, Garvin-Doxas, R Kathleen. (2010). Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI): A diagnostic tool for revealing
student thinking
.
A key to effective teaching is an awareness and accurate understanding of the
thinking and implicit assumptions that students bring to the subject to be
learned. In the absence of extensive Socratic interactions with students, one
strategy to assess student thinking involves the use of concept inventories
(CIs). CIs are typically multiple-choice assessments, constructed based on
research into student thinking and language, and designed to reveal the
presence of common misconceptions and implicit assumptions pertaining to a
particular facet of a subject. Here we describe the open-source Biological
Concepts Instrument (BCI), a diagnostic, multiple-choice instrument designed to
provide instructors with a preliminary map of a number of basic ideas in
molecular level biology. We describe the strategy behind its design, the
research upon which it is based, item construction, and its possible uses as a
means to reveal and address persistent and often unrecognized conceptual
obstacles.