ENHANCING ASSESSMENT IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES  

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Introduction and context

A core principle of effective curriculum design across disciplines is the alignment of assessment strategies with student learning outcomes. In our interviews with biological science practitioners, we asked them to identify some of the key learning outcomes in their subject or program and the strategies they used to align assessment with student learning outcomes.

Biologists distinguished between discipline-specific and generic learning outcomes. In the biological sciences, discipline-specific outcomes included a demonstrated ability to:

• Understand basic concepts of biology
• Synthesise key concepts in the form of an overview of the subject
• Assess a biological issue; to be able to dissect the important component of a situation and make an objective conclusion
• Appreciate the complexity as well as the limitations of the biology world, strengths and weaknesses of the overall scientific method
• Understand biology in an evolutionary context
• Understand the way scientists approach a problem - the ways and methods to work and think through the solution
• Respect scientific method and the rules of evidence
• Conduct research in the discipline
• Write practical reports, consider the results, and draw conclusions with justification.

Generic skills identified by biological sciences interviewees included a demonstrated ability to:

• Present a case and be persuasive
• Communicate effectively
• Think critically
• Value working in a team
• Respect the rights of class peers to contribute diverse views in a supportive academic environment
• Develop respect and understanding for people from all backgrounds and cultures, and be able to engage in constructive discussion of significant social and ethical issues
• Display a professional commitment to ethical practice on a daily basis
• Revise judgments and change behaviour in light of new evidence.

[see also: Learning outcomes in the biological sciences]

The move to outcomes-based assessment across the disciplines in many universities reflects a recognition of the need to align outcomes and assessment. However, outcomes-based assessment, including in the biological sciences, is not without its challenges, as identified in the next section.

Views from the field: Issues in assessing outcomes in the biological sciences

The academic staff interviewed identified several issues faced in trying to assess student learning outcomes in the biological sciences. These are summarised by the following observation that:

Trying to get some congruence between what it is that the assessment task is requiring students to do...and what you want them to do I think is the biggest challenge. [academic]

Three core challenges emerged from the data, as follows.

i. Not all learning outcomes are easily assessable

Academics in the biological sciences expressed the concern that some outcomes are not easily assessable. For instance, outcomes in the affective domain, such as valuing the scientific method, or having a sense of curiosity are not easily identifiable in a single assessment task. Several measures may be required to assess these less tangible outcomes.

[see also: Assessing generic skills]

ii. Assessing a broad range of learning outcomes can be resource intensive

Another concern among practitioners relates to the limited resources available to assess a broad range of outcomes in the most effective ways possible. For instance, assessing content knowledge by means of multiple-choice items tends to be much more efficient than assessing student reasoning or deeper processing of ideas.

As one academic commented:

I think to assess something like student awareness of issues is very difficult. You want them to write about it and to think about it as they're writing. And quite frankly, we don't have the resources to mark essays at first year. [academic]

[see also: Coping with resource constraints].

iii. Teaching and assessment methods are not always conducive to achieving a broad range of student learning outcomes

One interviewee spoke for many when he noted that:

The great irony is...that if you were to look at most first-year biology courses and say, 'Well, what are the thinking skills that all of these assessment tasks are actually emphasising and encouraging?' It's probably memorisation, which is probably the one thinking skill that shouldn't be there. [academic]

Strategies for aligning assessment with learning outcomes in the biological sciences

Despite the challenges, there are several effective strategies that assist in the alignment of assessment and desired student learning outcomes across the undergraduate years.

Strategy 1. Designing assessment tasks that align with the subject aims and goals for student learning

When designing assessment tasks, it helps to keep the goals for the subject (sometimes referred to as 'objectives') uppermost in one's thinking. We can literally align these two closely related elements of our curriculum by making sure that, as we make decisions about the assessment tasks for our students each semester, we keep the list of subject objectives handy as a reference point. We ask ourselves, 'how does this assessment activity help students to achieve this learning objective?'

A very useful tool for helping to align assessment activities with subject objectives is Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom categorised the level of abstraction of questions that typically occur in educational settings. The taxonomy is based on the premise that what educators want their students to learn can be arranged hierarchically from less to more cognitively complex tasks.

The table below presents the hierarchy of cognitive tasks, accompanied by sample verbs that we might use in assessment tasks, depending on what learning one expects students to be able to demonstrate. Some sample behaviours from the biological sciences are also presented by way of example.

LEVEL	DEFINITION	SAMPLE VERBS	SAMPLE BEHAVIOURS from the Biological Sciences
Knowledge	Student recalls or recognises information, ideas, and principles in the approximate form in which they were learned.	Write , List, Label, Name, State, Define, Recall.	Eg The student can state four steps in the use of a pipette and pipette filler [Example: Ross 1]
Comprehension	Student translates, comprehends, or interprets information based on prior learning.	Explain, Summarise, Paraphrase, Describe, Illustrate, Discuss.	Eg The student will describe the problem addressed in the essay. [Example: Mulder 3]
Application	Student selects, transfers, and uses data and principles to complete a problem or task with a minimum of direction.	Use, Compute, Solve, Demonstrate, Apply, Construct, Illustrate.	Eg. The students will produce a 'management recommendation' for a particular public park surveyed [Example: Cooke 3]
Analysis	Student distinguishes, classifies, and relates the assumptions, hypotheses, evidence or structure of a statement or question.	Analyse, Categorise, Compare, Contrast, Separate, Distinguish, Calculate, Test.	Eg The student will compare and contrast a healthy and a diseased hoof. [Example: Noble]
Synthesis	Student originates, integrates, and combines ideas into a product, plan or proposal that is new to him or her.	Create, Design Hypothesise, Invent, Develop, Organise, Formulate, Propose.	Eg The student will develop a formal grant proposal aimed at a particular company or grant scheme. [Example: Mamo]
Evaluation	Student appraises, assesses, or critiques on a basis of specific standards and criteria.	Judge, Recommend, Critique, Justify, Appraise, Evaluate, Assess.	Eg The student will, in a group, evaluate an assay kit produced by peers [Example: Hancock 1]

Source: adapted from Huitt, W. (2004). Bloom et al.'s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved 8/1/07 

One academic, uses the 'CIA model' where he aligns Curriculum, Instructional activity and Assessment and makes it a priority to make these linkages transparent to students. This involves taking the time to work through the subject and program outcomes and to explain how assessment tasks and learning activities are used to help students achieve these outcomes. It may also be beneficial to ask students, themselves, to look for the alignment between the intended learning outcomes and their assessment tasks. This helps to raise student awareness about the fact that assessment is more than just a task to be ticked off the list and forgotten. Rather, it is an integral part of the learning process.

Several other taxonomies have been designed to categorise, for example, thinking skills, however Bloom's taxonomy provides a simple and useful reference point, particularly to those who want a quick guide to enhancing the connections between subject objectives and assessment in their subject.

An increasing number of academics are using an outcomes-based assessment method that makes the learning outcomes and the marks allocated for the demonstration of each learning outcome explicit for students [Examples: Hancock 1; Noble; Mulder 3]. In some universities it is university policy to use a criterion referenced assessment in all units. One academic who trialled the use of a criterion referenced assessment method for exams said:

The criteria were developed by me in the first instance, as unit coordinator, and then negotiated with the other two examiners. Since the criteria were used for marking of all six essays, they were necessarily generic in nature, but were still able to cover the scientific requirements of the examiners. An unspecified criterion was provided for use by the examiners, in case they wished to include a more specific requirement, but none took up this option. Students were advised of the criteria early in the semester, so that they could prepare accordingly. [academic]

Some of the benefits found from using this approach are described in [Example: Hargreaves 1].

Strategy 2. Adopt a developmental approach to assessing learning outcomes

Another useful tool to assist in linking assessment with outcomes in the biological sciences is the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982), which stands for:

Structure of

Observed

Learning

Outcomes

As the name suggests, the taxonomy draws attention to the importance of designing assessment in such a way that it provides evidence of what students have learned. The SOLO taxonomy depicts learning in terms of a five-stage sequential development in the structural complexity of students' concepts and skills. This sequence may be used to guide assessment of specific outcomes in the subject.

The examples below are taken from an analysis of students' answers to the question, "Much of Biology is about the way organisms have become adapted to their environment through the process of evolution. What do you know about adaptation ?" [Example: Taylor 5].

1. Pre-structural: students acquire bits of unconnected information that have no organisation and make no sense, they fail to demonstrate an understanding of the key concept.

Example: Student's answer may include biological words but this lacks relevance to question.

2. Unistructural: students are able to tackle one aspect of a task and make simple and obvious connections among concepts related to it, but they do not grasp the context of this task and its connections to other key ideas in the subject and the discipline. Assessment of this level is primarily quantitative.

Example: Student's answer includes one comment on adaptations (Eg structural, physiological, behavioural) but not in an evolutionary context;

Or

one relevant concept: a description, a key word or one idea (Eg survival of the fittest; Darwin ; idea of inheritance; natural selection)

3. Multistructural: students now tackle several aspects of a task and may make a number of connections between concepts and ideas in the subject, but they fail to make meta-level connections and do not see the connections in a broader context. Assessment of this level is primarily quantitative.

Example: Student's answer includes a more comprehensive list of relevant concepts or a group of ideas, which are poorly explained and not clearly related.

4. Relational level: at this stage students appreciate the significance of the parts of their learning in relation to the whole. Students at this point of development are typically said to have demonstrated an adequate understanding of the topic. Assessment of this level tends to be qualitative in order to give students an opportunity to demonstrate their broader understanding of the connections between key concepts.

Example: Student's answer relates change to environmental change. It includes a notion of time scale or bigger list of relevant concepts (Eg. change + including an idea like survival of the fittest).

5. At the extended abstract level, students make connections not only within the specific subject area, but also beyond it to the broader discipline and its context. Students at this stage are able to conceptualise at a higher level of abstraction and transfer the principles and ideas underlying the specific instance. This too requires qualitative assessment. (Biggs, 1995)

Example: Student writes an extended answer with a number of relevant ideas, but no personal reflections. The answer usually has relevant examples and explanations.

Source: adapted from Atherton, J. S. (2005) Learning and Teaching: SOLO taxonomy   [On-line] Accessed: 11/1/07

Example: Taylor 5, Use of SOLO taxonomy to grade student written answers.

How to assess higher level thinking in the biological sciences

Interviewees provided many good examples of assessments designed to challenge students to think at more complex and abstract levels in the biological sciences. A selection of these is included in the right hand column.

References

Biggs, J. (1995). Assessing for learning: Some dimensions underlying new approaches to educational assessment. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 41(1), 1-17.

Biggs, J.B., and Collis, K.F. (1982). Evaluating the Quality of Learning - the SOLO Taxonomy. New York : Academic Press.

Bloom, B. (1984). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Boston : Allyn and Bacon.

To reference material from this site, please use:

Harris, K-L., Krause, K., Gleeson, D., Peat, M., Taylor, C. & Garnett, R. (2007). Enhancing Assessment in the Biological Sciences: Ideas and resources for university educators. Available at: www.bioassess.edu.au