Assessing Quantitative Reasoning: Evaluate What Students Know

• Activity Number: 128
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Kimberly Massaro*+ and Ermine Orta and Nandini Kannan
• Companies: The University of Texas at San Antonio and The University of Texas at San Antonio and The University of Texas at San Antonio
• Keywords: Quantitative Reasoning ; Taxonomy ; Assessment

Abstract

Developing effective assessments of quantitative reasoning (QR) has posed a significant challenge to the academic community. Even though there is a significant amount of literature on assessment of mathematical skills, the research on assessing QR has been rather limited. One of the main challenges with developing effective assessments is that quantitative reasoning skills are, by definition, rooted in context. The University of Texas at San Antonio developed a plan to integrate quantitative reasoning skills across various disciplines in the general education curriculum. To assess and evaluate different levels of student learning, the taxonomy of Bloom and Webb was used to identify a list of action verbs associated with a basic, intermediate, and advanced level of cognition. This process has allowed for student performance data to be collected and tracked longitudinally. An example of th