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All:

This is something that a number of you may be interested in, so I  
thought I would reply to the listserve (even though I just emailed  
Steve to tell him he was now in the "club" of people who mistakenly  
email listervs - of which I am a member!)

So: Absolutely, the discrimination of the GCI is something that is an  
important concern for research.I have an ongoing expert-novice  
research project right now, and while the GCI is a great tool for  
distinguishing novices and experts, it is not that great for parsing  
out LEVELS of expertise. Nor is it a good instrument beyond entry- 
level students, and we really need a tool for assessment of majors.  
Steve and I  (and Gerd Kortemeyer) have a new NSF-funded  project to  
revise and expand the GCI; ultimately, we hope that a large number of  
faculty and researchers will become GCI authors and write questions,  
and we hope to add ~500 new GCI questions.

The choice of a 15-item GCI accommodates test fatigue. My personal  
perspective is that 17 good, thought-provoking questions is about the  
maximum that a normal (non-expert) test subject can complete without  
beginning to fatigue. A 45 question instrument would probably be too  
long, although certainly this would be a pretty simple thing to create  
and correlate with the existing 15-item version.

P.S.: We'll be in touch VERY SOON to announce the GCI WebCenter!

Take care
Julie


On Feb 4, 2009, at 3:35 PM, Anderson, Steven wrote:

> Julie, I am up in Calgary giving my talk and thought about something  
> that has been bothering me about the GCI. We see essentially no  
> improvement with high pretesters which either means they didnlt  
> improve their conceptual understanding or that the 15 item subtest  
> is simply not sensitive enough (i mean if they get 12 right on the  
> pre test there really isn't much room for improvement). For those  
> using the gci for research this can be very limiting. Should we  
> think about maybe doing a 45 quetsion 'research-grade' gci subtest  
> for researchers that has more high end sensitivity (especially if we  
> want to study more advanced learners)?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Julie Libarkin" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 2/4/09 1:12 PM
> Subject: Subscribing to the list
>
> All:
>
> If you have colleagues who would like to subscribe to the listserv,
> please send them these instructions:
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> Thanks,
> Julie
>
> Julie Libarkin
> Assistant Professor, Director - Geocognition Research Lab
> Dept. of Geological Sciences & Division of Science and Math Education
> Michigan State University
> 206 Natural Science
> East Lansing, MI 48824
> 517-355-8369
>

Julie Libarkin
Assistant Professor, Director - Geocognition Research Lab
Dept. of Geological Sciences & Division of Science and Math Education
Michigan State University
206 Natural Science
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-355-8369