title: Development of a meiosis concept inventory.
abstract: We have designed, developed, and validated a 17-question Meiosis Concept Inventory (Meiosis CI) to diagnose student misconceptions on meiosis, which is a fundamental concept in genetics. We targeted large introductory biology and genetics courses and used published methodology for question development, which included the validation of questions by student interviews (n = 28), in-class testing of the questions by students (n = 193), and expert (n = 8) consensus on the correct answers. Our item analysis showed that the questions' difficulty and discrimination indices were in agreement with published recommended standards and discriminated effectively between high- and low-scoring students. We foresee other institutions using the Meiosis CI as both a diagnostic tool and an instrument to assess teaching effectiveness and student progress, and invite instructors to visit http://q4b.biology.ubc.ca for more information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada Science Centre for Learning and Teaching, Faculty of Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kalas
authors.forename: Angie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: O'Neill
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pollock
authors.forename: Gülnur
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Birol
mesh_terms: D001695:Biology / Q000193:education*; D005823:Genetics / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008540:Meiosis; D013334:Students; D013663:Teaching