Meeting: Working Group

Evoci toolkit: concept inventories to assess conceptual understanding of evolution


Date6-Feb-2012 ~ 9-Feb-2012
ProjectEvoci toolkit: concept inventories to assess conceptual understanding of evolution
SummaryThis Working Group will develop tools to diagnose the conceptual understanding of key aspects of evolutionary thinking. Collectively, these Evolution Concept Inventories (EvoCI) can be used to conduct hypothesis-based research on how students learn evolution. We will begin by identifying concepts to target, modeling our diagnostic questions on existing concept inventories (CIs) like the Concept Inventory of Natural Selection. The questions will be multiple choice format and the incorrect choices for each question will be based on common misconceptions synthesized from the literature. CIs are useful for assessing conceptual understanding of evolution in individual classrooms, and also across institutions and curricula at the national level. The tools will be available through the ciHUB, an online portal that administers the questions and generates instructors’ reports. Our collaboration provides a base for future expansion, as more CIs that measure evolutionary understanding are developed.