Stevens-Research Problem • Students have misconceptions about key concepts in

microbiology, but we don’t understand what those are.

• By ascertaining the misconceptions, especially those related to instruction, appropriate classroom intervention strategies may be developed.

Stevens-Research Question• Research Question:

What are the key misconceptions that students have about

[antibiotic resistance*].

*substitute other topics/questions later

• Research Context:

Engage microbiology faculty in understanding student learning

to improve individual classes and the curriculum as a whole.

• My question is interesting because:

There is little literature available to the microbiology community

about student misconceptions.

Stevens-Research Methodology• 1. Use the University of Maryland 17 question 2-tiered

concept inventory to assess student understanding of key concepts before and after several microbiology courses in the curriculum (lower level to higher level).

• 2. Develop codebooks to categorize/code student misconceptions for four questions* from the pre-survey of General Microbiology (use a “rapid” non-quantitative process perhaps with subset of students).

*add additional questions later

• 3. Use codebooks for each question to quantitate data from the total presurvey and postsurvey data; further refine codebook during process.

Stevens-Alignment of Research Question and Methodology

Insure that the misconceptions topics are aligned with the key concepts/learning objectives of the curriculum tested in the concpt inventory.

Student explanation:Theme of misconception (up to two/student)Explanation correct? (1, 2, 0)Answer correct? (1, 2, 0)