Psychologist Michael Granaas (2007), in his EdStat post of 5 Sep 2007
titled "pretesting" wrote [bracketed by lines "GGGGGGG. . . . ."]
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Jeff asks:
...but did your college students add 5 numbers and divide by 2 to
determine the mean like a number of mine did on my prior-knowledge pretest?
OUCH...no, but only because I have only this semester begun using pretests.
Speaking of which....any suggestions for pretesting would be of great
interest to me.
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Michael Granaas appears to be a pretesting pioneer among
psychologists of the post Cronbach & Furby (1970) era - see e.g., "Do
Psychologists Research the Effectiveness of Their Courses? [Hake
(2005a,b)].
Judging from the EdStat responses to Michael's post, subscribers to
EdStat may not be aware that formative pre/post testing is being
successfully employed to improve the effectiveness of courses in
undergraduate astronomy, biology, chemistry, economics, geoscience,
engineering, mathematics, and physics; but NOT psychology! For
references see, e.g. Hake (2005c; 2006a,b; 2007).
For suggestions on the administration and reporting of diagnostic
pre/post tests see Section 5 of "Assessment of Physics Teaching
Methods" [Hake (2002)].
Dennis Roberts (2007) in his EdStat post on this thread points out
various difficulties in using the pre-to-post test gain for grading
purposes. Of course, no sane person would use pre-to-post test gain
for grading purposes, and gain is NOT so used in any of the formative
pre/post testing cited above.
Dennis concludes (in his ellipses-filled eecummings style):
"Regardless of the above ... it still would be a great idea ... if
just done once or twice ... to use a pre and posttest ... just to get
some approximate idea of how much PROGRESS students make, if only on
average for the overall class."
I agree with Dennis that pre/post testing is a great idea, but
disagree that it should be done only once or twice. In physics
education research pre/post testing has been carried out thousands of
times and has at least partially stimulated the reform of a tiny
fraction of introductory physics courses in the U.S., including large
enrollment courses at Harvard [Crouch & Mazur (2001)], North Carolina
State University [Beichner & Saul (2004)], MIT [Dori & Belcher
(2004)], University of Colorado at Boulder [Pollock (2004)], and
California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo
[Hoellwarth et al. (2005)].
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>
REFERENCES
Beichner, R.J & J.M. Saul. 2004. "Introduction to the SCALE-UP
(Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate
Programs) Project," in Proceedings of the International School of
Physics "Enrico Fermi" Course CLVI in Varenna, Italy, M. Vicentini
and E.F. Redish, eds. IOS Press; online at
<http://www.ncsu.edu/per/Articles/Varenna_SCALEUP_Paper.pdf> (1MB).
Crouch, C.H. & E. Mazur. 2001. "Peer Instruction: Ten years of
experience and results," Am. J. Phys. 69: 970-977; online at
<http://tinyurl.com/sbys4>.
Dori, Y.J. & J. Belcher. 2004. "How Does Technology-Enabled Active
Learning Affect Undergraduate Students' Understanding of
Electromagnetism Concepts?" The Journal of the Learning Sciences
14(2), online as a 1 MB pdf at <http://tinyurl.com/cqoqt>.
Cronbach, L. & L. Furby. 1970. "How we should measure 'change'- or
should we?" Psychological Bulletin 74: 68-80.
Granaas, M. 2007. "pretesting", EdStat post of 5 Sep 2007 11:04:52
-0500; online at <http://tinyurl.com/ypnozj>.
Hake, R.R. 2002. "Assessment of Physics Teaching Methods,"
Proceedings of the UNESCO ASPEN Workshop on Active Learning in
Physics, Univ. of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, 2-4 Dec.; online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/Hake-SriLanka-Assessb.pdf> (84
kB). [UNESCO = United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization; ASPEN = ASian Physics Education Network.]
Hake, R.R. 2005a. "Do Psychologists Research The Effectiveness Of
Their Own Introductory Courses?" TIPS post of 19 Feb 2005
07:58:43-0800; online at
<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg13133.html>.
Hake, R.R. 2005b. "Do Psychologists Research the Effectiveness of
Their Courses? Hake Responds to Sternberg," online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0507&L=pod&P=R11939&I=-3>.
Post of 21 Jul 2005 22:55:31-0700 to AERA-C, AERA-D, AERA-J, AERA-L,
ASSESS, EvalTalk, POD, PhysLrnR, and STLHE-L.
Hake, R. R. 2005c. "The Physics Education Reform Effort: A Possible
Model for Higher Education?" online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/NTLF42.pdf> (100 kB). This is a
slightly edited version of an article that was (a) published in the
National Teaching and Learning Forum 15(1), December, online to
subscribers at
<http://www.ntlf.com/FTPSite/issues/v15n1/physics.htm>, and (b)
disseminated by the Tomorrow's Professor list
<http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings.html> as Msg. 698 on 14 Feb
2006. For an executive summary see Hake (2006a).
Hake, R.R. 2006a. "A Possible Model For Higher Education: The Physics
Reform Effort (Author's Executive Summary)," Spark (American
Astronomical Society Newsletter), June, online at
<http://www.aas.org/education/spark/SparkJune06.pdf> (1.9MB). Scroll
down about 4/5 of the way to the end of the newsletter.
Hake, R.R. 2006b. "Possible Palliatives for the Paralyzing Pre/Post
Paranoia that Plagues Some PEP's," [PEP = Psychologists, Education
specialists, Psychometricians] Journal of MultiDisciplinary
Evaluation, Number 6, November, online at
<http://evaluation.wmich.edu/jmde/JMDE_Num006.html>. This even
despite the admirable anti-alliteration advice at psychologist Donald
Zimmerman's site
<http://mypage.direct.ca/z/zimmerma/> to: "Always assiduously and
attentively avoid awful, awkward, atrocious, appalling, artificial,
affected alliteration."
Hake, R.R. 2007. "Should We Measure Change? Yes!" online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/MeasChangeS.pdf> or, if that
doesn't, work ref. 43 at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>. To
appear as a chapter in a "Evaluation of Teaching and Student Learning
in Higher Education," Monograph, American Evaluation Association
<http://www.eval.org/>.
Hoellwarth, C., M. J. Moelter, and R.D. Knight. 2005. "A direct
comparison of conceptual learning and problem solving ability in
traditional and studio style classrooms," Am. J. Phys. 73(5):
459-463; abstract online at <http://tinyurl.com/br88n>.
Pollock, S. 2004. "No Single Cause: Learning Gains, Student
Attitudes, and the Impacts of Multiple Effective Reforms," 2004
Physics Education Research Conference: AIP Conference Proceeding,
vol. 790; J. Marx, P. Heron, & S. Franklin, eds., pp. 137-140, online
as a 316 kB pdf at <http://tinyurl.com/9tfk4>.
Roberts, D. 2007. "Re: pretesting" EdStat post of 6 Sep 2007
16:26:16-0400; online at <http://tinyurl.com/2aq9vx>.
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