Classroom Response Systems and the Development of Students' Conceptual Understanding: The Value of Question Ambiguity

• Activity Number: 294
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Robert Terry*+ and Teri J. Murphy and Curtis C. McKnight and Michael Richman
• Companies: University of Oklahoma and University of Oklahoma and University of Oklahoma and University of Oklahoma
• Keywords: Psychometrics ; Item-Writing ; Clickers ; Validity

Abstract

Classroom response system (CRS) technology, used successfully in introductory physics courses for a number of years, can facilitate student-student or whole-class discussion of statistics concepts. One challenge in using such teaching strategies is determining what constitutes a useful question. The CRS technology, consistent with standard psychometric theory, assumes that one of the MC options is clearly better than the distracters, assuming that instructors will give students full credit for choosing this option and less credit for choosing one of the distracters. As we have used this technology, however, we have discovered that impressive discussion has been generated particularly by questions for which more than one response can be defended. Such questions include the choice of appropriate population, the choice among different estimators, and the handling of outliers.