Development of a tool to assess inference-making and reasoning in biology

Jennifer G. Cromley; Ting Dai; Tia S. Fechter; Frank E. Nelson; Martin van Boekel; Yang Du

doi:10.1128/JMBE.00159-21

Development of a tool to assess inference-making and reasoning in biology

Jennifer G. Cromley, Ting Dai, Tia S. Fechter, Frank E. Nelson, Martin van Boekel, Yang Du

Educational Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Making inferences and reasoning with new scientific information is critical for successful performance in biology coursework. Thus, identifying students who are weak in these skills could allow the early provision of additional support and course placement recommendations to help students develop their reasoning abilities, leading to better performance and less attrition within biology courses. Researchers across universities partnered to develop a measure to assess students' inference-making abilities in biology. We describe the development of the inference-making and reasoning in biology assessment (IMRB). The IMRB is a 15-item multiple-choice assessment that uses short paragraphs of content-from the most-used textbook-taught at the end of a semester of survey biology courses designed for science majors. Based on our research, when the IMRB is conducted at the beginning of a semester, it measures deductive reasoning with new biology information, is fair across various student groups, and is reliable. The IMRB can be used with or without SAT or ACT scores to place students into regular undergraduate introductory biology courses, to predict grades in such courses, and/or to identify students who may need extra support or remediation in reasoning with new biology information. The IMRB is available free of charge to interested faculty and researchers.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	e00159-21
Journal	Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education
Volume	22
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1128/JMBE.00159-21
State	Published - Sep 1 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The research reported herein was funded by grant R305A160335 from the U.S. Department of Education to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The opinions are those of the authors and do not represent the policies of the U.S. Department of Education. We declare no conflicts of interest.

Funding Information:
We thank the professors who agreed to allow us to administer the IMRB to their students and provided feedback to inform the IMRB refinement and development of score interpretation tools. We also thank the students who voluntarily consented to participate in the research to develop and refine the IMRB. The research reported herein was funded by grant R305A160335 from the U.S. Department of Education to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The opinions are those of the authors and do not represent the policies of the U.S. Department of Education. We declare no conflicts of interest.

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2020 Cromley et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Keywords

Assessment
Biology
Deductive
Grade
Inference
Measure
Predict
Reasoning
Retention
STEM

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Development of a tool to assess inference-making and reasoning in biology

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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