PARENT SESSION
Thursday, August 10, 5:00-6:30 pm
Poster Session 25 - Ecological and science education
Exhibit Hall, Ballroom Level, Cook Convention Center
Using TIEE to improve analytical and graphing skills for undergraduates.
Picone, Chris*,1, Hyatt, Laura*,2, Parshall, Tim3, Rhode, Jennifer*,4, 1 Fitchburg State College, Fitchburg, MA2 Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ3 Westfield State College, Westfield, MA4 Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, GA
ABSTRACT- Faculty teaching ecology and environmental courses typically assess whether students have learned specific content but rarely assess whether students have improved critical skills in data analysis and graphing. To improve our teaching of these skills, we introduced a series of analytical and graphing "interventions" based on materials from the ESA's electronic publication, Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE). Interventions included 1) Introductions on graph interpretation and presentation; 2) Active-learning exercises in which students interpreted graphs to learn course concepts; and 3) Exercises where students created graphs from raw data. We assessed student progress via pre- and post-tests of attitudes and analytical skills for 190 students from four colleges. Tests indicate that student attitudes and confidence in their skills generally improved as a result of specific exercises. While abilities to interpret graphs increased in some cases, the change was not as much as expected. We suggest that 1) some students have learned how to interpret simple graphs in previous courses; 2) graphs with complex interactions are sufficiently difficult that our interventions did not substantially improve understanding; and 3) increased student abilities may have been masked by flaws in our pre- and post-test questions. In contrast, our interventions clearly improved student abilities to interpret raw data by creating graphs. In addition to assessing student progress, our tests revealed specific misconceptions about data analysis that we can correct. This study will allow us to develop a clear set of learning objectives matched with measurable outcomes for improving future work with students.
Key words: Education, Assessment