CAREER: A Model for Achieving Flexible and Scalable Conceptual Assessment – A Prototype in Undergraduate Quantum Mechanics

职业：实现灵活且可扩展的概念评估的模型 - 本科生量子力学的原型

基本信息

批准号：
2143976
负责人：
Bethany Wilcox
金额：
$ 74.51万
依托单位：
University of Colorado at Boulder
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Continuing Grant
财政年份：
2022
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2022-08-01 至 2027-07-31
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2143976&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
CAREER Model Achieving Flexible Scalable

项目摘要

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This project aims to serve the national interest by creating a flexible and robust tool to measure student learning in undergraduate quantum mechanics courses. Such a measurement tool is important because applications of quantum mechanics within science and industry represent a growing area of potential and priority for the country. As technologies such as quantum computers are well on their way to being a reality, it will be critical that the STEM education community provides effective educational programs the produce a quantum-literate workforce that can work in these cutting-edge industries. Having a tool that can measure students’ learning of quantum mechanics concepts is a vitally important part of ensuring that these programs are effective at achieving their goals. This project also aims to provide the ability to compare the effectiveness of different quantum education courses and programs to identify efficient and innovative instructional strategies and approaches. Additionally, this new measurement tool seeks to provide a mechanism by which we can identify differential performance between different groups of students within quantum education. Differences in performance are often reflective of inequities in the educational system in which some groups are better supported than others. Identifying these inequities is the first step to changing the system to ensure that all students, regardless of their identities or backgrounds can be successful, thus supporting the goal of retaining and supporting a diverse population of students in STEM programs and careers. To accomplish the goals above, this project intends to establish and implement a new model for the design and structure of assessments in Physics Education Research (PER) through the development of a flexible coverage prototype assessment. This work is timely in that it addresses a growing need for assessments that better support the educational goals of the community, and the flexible nature of the assessment will allow for its broad adoption and facilitate positive impact on student learning on a broader scale than has previously been achieved. The proposed prototype assessment seeks to target undergraduate quantum mechanics (QM). QM represents an ideal content area to test this new assessment model because it is a foundational component of undergraduate physics programs, but also features significant variation in the content covered at different institutions. The proposed instrument - the Quantum Physics Assessment (QuPA) - will be composed of questions from existing, static QM assessments, as well as new items developed to target important topical areas of QM not already captured by the existing assessments such as quantum information. To accommodate flexible content coverage and ensure the QuPA items are unbiased, Item Response Theory (IRT) will guide the validation of the QuPA. The use of IRT to develop assessments like the QuPA, while novel in PER, is a state-of-the-art approach used in multiple other fields. Results from the QuPA will also be analyzed to identify curricular approaches which result in higher student performance relative to other approaches. Detailed documentation and dissemination of the development and validation of the QuPA to multiple STEM disciplines will provide a model allowing others to replicate this process in the development of future assessments for other content areas.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项的全部或部分资金来源于《2021 年美国救援计划法案》（公法 117-2）。该项目旨在通过创建灵活而强大的工具来衡量学生在本科量子力学课程中的学习情况，从而服务于国家利益。这种测量工具很重要，因为量子力学在科学和工业中的应用代表了该国不断增长的潜力和优先领域，随着量子计算机等技术正在逐步成为现实，至关重要的是STEM 教育社区提供有效的教育计划培养能够在这些尖端行业工作的具有量子素养的劳动力，拥有一个可以衡量学生对量子力学概念学习情况的工具是确保这些计划有效实现其目标的一个至关重要的部分。提供比较不同量子教育课程和计划的有效性的能力，以确定高效和创新的教学策略和方法。此外，这种新的测量工具旨在提供一种机制，通过该机制我们可以识别量子领域不同学生群体之间的差异表现。教育表现的差异往往反映了不平等。在某些群体比其他群体得到更好支持的教育体系中，识别这些不平等现象是改变体系的第一步，以确保所有学生，无论其身份或背景如何，都能取得成功，从而支持保留和支持一个群体的目标。为了实现上述目标，该项目打算通过开发灵活的覆盖原型评估来建立和实施物理教育研究（PER）评估设计和结构的新模型。这项工作是及时的，因为它解决了日益增长的问题需要更好地支持社区的教育目标，并且评估的灵活性将使其得到广泛采用，并在比以前更广泛的范围内促进对学生学习的积极影响。拟议的原型评估旨在实现目标。本科生量子力学（QM）代表了测试这种新评估模型的理想内容领域，因为它是本科生物理课程的基础组成部分，但不同机构所涵盖的内容也存在显着差异。评估 (QuPA) - 将由以下问题组成现有的静态 QM 评估，以及针对现有评估尚未捕获的重要 QM 主题领域而开发的新项目，例如量子信息。为了适应灵活的内容覆盖并确保 QuPA 项目公正，项目响应理论 (IRT)。将指导 QuPA 的验证。使用 IRT 来开发像 QuPA 这样的评估，虽然在 PER 中是新颖的，但也是在多个其他领域使用的最先进的方法。课程方法相对于其他方法，QuPA 的开发和验证的详细记录和传播将提供一个模型，允许其他人在其他内容领域的未来评估开发中复制此过程。通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，NSF 的法定使命被认为值得支持。