HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (2) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Oh, D. M. Articles by Krilowicz, B. L. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Oh, D. M. Articles by Krilowicz, B. L.

HOW WE TEACH

Valid and reliable authentic assessment of culminating student performance in the biomedical sciences

¹ Educational Foundations and Interdivisional Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, California ² Department of Mathematics, California State University, Los Angeles, California ³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, California State University, Los Angeles, California ⁴ Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, California

Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: B. L. Krilowicz; Dept. of Biological Sciences, California State Univ., 5151 State Univ. Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90032 (E-mail: bkrilow{at}calstatela.edu)

There is increasing pressure, both from institutions central to the national scientific mission and from regional and national accrediting agencies, on natural sciences faculty to move beyond course examinations as measures of student performance and to instead develop and use reliable and valid authentic assessment measures for both individual courses and for degree-granting programs. We report here on a capstone course developed by two natural sciences departments, Biological Sciences and Chemistry/Biochemistry, which engages students in an important culminating experience, requiring synthesis of skills and knowledge developed throughout the program while providing the departments with important assessment information for use in program improvement. The student work products produced in the course, a written grant proposal, and an oral summary of the proposal, provide a rich source of data regarding student performance on an authentic assessment task. The validity and reliability of the instruments and the resulting student performance data were demonstrated by collaborative review by content experts and a variety of statistical measures of interrater reliability, including percentage agreement, intraclass correlations, and generalizability coefficients. The high interrater reliability reported when the assessment instruments were used for the first time by a group of external evaluators suggests that the assessment process and instruments reported here will be easily adopted by other natural science faculty.

Key words: interrater reliability; validity; higher education sciences; capstone course