Heather Seitz, Professor of Biology and Biotechnology at Johnston County Community College, presented a session at ASMCUE 2022 about ASK BIO: The Advancing Assessment Skills in Biology Network. The title of the session was “What makes a good question? Examining Assessment Practices in Undergraduate Biology.” Their goal is to advance assessment skills in the life sciences. The first question Seitz asked was: “what is your biggest challenge in creating assessments for your students outside of academic dishonesty issues?” In the chat, people mentioned time, challenging but not too challenging, Bloom’s level, energy, prompts to draw out what we are looking for, grading… Seitz also mentioned that this is often solitary work. The first aim is to establish “what is a good question?” The network developed a Test Blueprint, a and a series of workshop and resources. Seitz explained how to construct a test blueprint and use it. I learned that Heather shares the test blueprint for some exams with students to let them know how many questions for each topic will be on an assessment. The Item-Writing Checklist has recommendations to promote the construction of items that: “remove obstacles that might prevent knowledgeable students from getting the item right” and “remove clues that might result in the unprepared student from getting the item right.” The item-writing checklist addresses content concerns, formatting, writing the stem, and writing the options. The last tool Seitz shared was the Aligned Question Set template that includes the question set topic, thinking skill with lower order and higher order formative and summative items, and topic. Seitz noted that there is value in peer feedback. Next, Seitz explained that the ASK BIO team has a data analysis strategy focusing on collecting and analyzing 700 questions! Another team is working on qualitative coding rubrics and analysis of questions. ASK BIO coordinates with HHMI (Melissa Csikari) and Scott Freeman. Heather Seitz ended with a call for facilitators and opportunities for workshops. There were several questions from attendees about how to participate, request workshops, and do item analysis. I’m enjoying ASK BIO network activities and learning about item analysis. I’m excited about improving as a facilitator and working on the inclusive item checklist.
