Tonight I watched an ASMCUE 2022 recorded poster presentation entitled “Understanding the Effects of Administration Stakes and Setting on Biology Concept Assessment Scores.” Crystal Uminski from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln was the presenter. They defined concept assessments as tools to measure student learning particularly in biology. They used the cell biology instrument and wanted to know if changing the stakes or setting would affect student behavior. They used motivation theory as their framework. They thought changing the stakes would incentivize using external resources and changing the setting would increase the access to external resources (particularly in the un proctored setting). They used the Introductory Molecular Cell Biology Assessment (IMCA) and piloted the use of a shorter version (from the 24 item original). They repeated the stakes and conditions over four years! Uminski thinks that bonus points as an incentive and access to resource out of class resulted in higher grades. Student performance on the final exam correlated with class performance. When they weren’t proctored and had incentive to do well, they spent more time on the assessment. The work was conducted with Brian A. Couch. Uminski urged to carefully interpret the higher stakes out-of-class scores. They also mentioned that the out-of-class lower stakes scores were not significantly different. Despite re-watching the six-minute video three times, I am still intrigued by how they changed the stakes through incentivizing with points. This study is thought-provoking in that how we incentivize and change the stakes of assessments influences time-on-task and scores on an assessment.
