This project adapts the Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) process, developed at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), as a mechanism for increasing undergraduate student understanding of experimental methods and quantitative approaches in biology. The student is presented with a problem and background information and then writes about it. Then, after guiding questions from faculty help the student demonstrate competence as a reviewer, the program delivers three peer documents for the student to review. The student answers guiding questions and assigns scores. Finally, the student does a self-review. The student's grade is based on both writing and reviewing. A new CPR system tracks assignment authors and versions to give credit to contributors who share and improve writing assignments. The Purdue project incorporates new problem-based writing assignments with peer review into the freshman course, Biology 131, to help students connect what they learn to both current and historical research endeavors. Biological problems are also being incorporated with writing assignments for peer review in the Statistics 301 course to help students understand how new knowledge accumulates in the biosciences and what ethical constraints such as predictions of the expected number of animals for a research study must be considered
Intellectual Merit: This project helps students learn how experimental and quantitative aspects of biology have changed along a historical continuum and introduces statistical skills (experimental/sampling design, one way ANOVA with multiple comparisons tests, variability and standard deviation, confidence intervals, P-values, use of significant figures and checking the assumptions underlying analysis of results) in a novel way and in a manner allied to student interests in biology. The assessment of outcomes in terms of student knowledge and attitudes and self perception of skills and abilities is an important component of this work, as development and refinement of the instruments used will add to knowledge about how to determine outcomes of projects such as this.
Broader Impact: As capacity is built for scaling-up so that faculty can share, critique, and improve CPR assignments, diversity issues relating to the content and quantitative aspects of biology are also being investigated. The project targets all students taking BIOL131 and STAT301 courses (over 1300 students annually) over the project term. The students periodically use a Participant Perception Inventory (PPI), a questionnaire designed to measure student perception of knowledge (cognitive dimension), experience (behavioral dimension), and confidence (affective dimension) about ethical, experimental, and quantitative aspects of research. What is also being tested is the prediction that if a student leaves a biology course with increased confidence about important aspects of bioscience research, their interest in doing research will increase. Graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants are also participating in this interdisciplinary project (biology and statistics) to improve their basic communication skills in both biology and statistics.
