Developing coupled, multiple-response assessment items addressing scientific practices

Abstract

Science education literature has called for blending of scientific practices with conceptual knowledge in higher education. With this move, there must also come a shift in the ways we assess students. To date, most research-based assessments place their main focus on conceptual knowledge as opposed to scientific practices, which may in part be due to the difficult nature of assessing scientific practices. Additionally, most assessment items addressing scientific practices are in free-response formats, which require in-class administration and scoring by hand, which can be onerous. Coupled, multiple-response (CMR) items pose a unique opportunity for assessing scientific practices because they elicit student reasoning while also allowing for streamlined, automated scoring. Grounded in Evidence-Centered Design, in this paper, we present the first stages in developing a generalizable process for creating CMR items that address scientific practices. We illustrate this process through an example from upper-division thermal physics.