 |
 |
Colleagues:
We wanted to update the community with the new features of the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI) WebCenter. Currently, the WebCenter has three main capabilities: to review existing questions, submit potential new GCI questions, and create GCI subtests from the question bank. This update focuses on the test creation capabilities and question writing aides.
Several colleagues have become co-authors of the GCI by contributing new questions. New pilot questions submitted by these colleagues are available for review and comment on the WebCenter. In addition to the classic entry-level GCI question, these authors have contributed questions targeted toward upper level geoscience majors and include topics such as plate tectonics and geologic structures. An alternative conceptions database of student ideas about geoscience and related fields has been uploaded to help seed new questions from the community (Access and Excel versions authored by Libarkin, Sexton, Richardson, and Ward are available for download). Please contact us with any additional conceptions or references that you would like added to the database. It will be updated periodically on the WebCenter. Please join us as co-authors of the GCI.
To assist you in creating GCI tests for your classrooms and research, we have created video tutorials that lead you through the test creation process. Additionally, we have a help document describing the process in pictures and words that is also available for download. Videos are available in the new “Tutorials” tab and the help document can be found under the “Manage Tests” tab in the WebCenter.
We encourage you to use the GCI WebCenter for pre- and post-testing of your students. The WebCenter automatically generates summary statistics for any test that you administer online. Anonymity of student responses is maintained although you will be able to: a) download a list of all students who have completed the test and b) match pre- and post- test scores for individual students.
You can access the GCI WebCenter at: http://gci.lite.msu.edu. Feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested in creating an assessment tool that is used, developed and authored by an entire community. We are excited to have enrolled a number of new users to the WebCenter and we look forward to working with you as both users and authors of the GCI.
Sincerely,
Julie Libarkin and Emily Geraghty Ward
Acknowledgements. We thank our Advisory Board and all GCI v.1.0 users who graciously provided constructive feedback, encouraged us in this new initiative, and are poised to become authors on a community GCI. Development of GCI v.1.0 was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants DUE-0127765, DUE-0350395, and DGE-9906479. The current project to revise and expand the GCI is funded by NSF through grants DUE-0717790 and DUE- 0717589. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.