Incorporate practical and procedural knowledge into the Readiness Assessment Test¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The authors recommend that RAT questions cover not only conceptual content but also practical and procedural knowledge, explicitly stating: "We recommend incorporating practical and procedural knowledge into the RAT (which we did not do in this module)". They observed that students struggled initially with sexing the flies, using dissection microscopes to observe behaviors, and incorporating environmental variables such as sound, light, and chamber size that alter behavior into their designs. Adding such items to the RAT would surface and resolve these procedural misconceptions during the readiness assurance phase rather than during experimentation.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• RAT items addressing hands-on techniques and environmental variables that alter behavior, in addition to conceptual reading content

Constraints¶

• The authors note this was not done in the module they report, so the recommendation is untested in their own implementation

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate students in laboratory science courses using TBL

Target Learning Goals¶

• procedural laboratory skills such as handling, sexing, and observing organisms
• incorporating environmental variables into experimental designs

Related Strategies¶

• Use IRAT as an indicator of subsequent assessment performance and exam-condition practice in pharmacy calculations
• Incorporate assessment questions that elicit causal mechanistic reasoning through phenomena, scaffolded but not over-probed

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Peterson, E.K. and Carrico, P. (2015). Laboratory Exercise in Behavioral Genetics Using Team-based Learning Strategies. Bioscene 41(2). https://visionandchange.org/files/2011/03/Revised-Vision-and-Change-Final-Report.pdf