Investigating the Role of an Inquiry-Based Biology Lab Course on Student Attitudes and Views toward Science.

Students' academic experiences can influence their conceptualization of science. In contrast experts hold particular beliefs, perceptions, opinions, and attitudes about science that are often absent in first-year undergraduate students. Shifts toward more expert-like attitudes and views have been linked to improved student engagement, critical-thinking ability, conceptual understanding, and academic performance.

Development of the Statistical Reasoning in Biology Concept Inventory (SRBCI).

We followed established best practices in concept inventory design and developed a 12-item inventory to assess student ability in statistical reasoning in biology (Statistical Reasoning in Biology Concept Inventory [SRBCI]). It is important to assess student thinking in this conceptual area, because it is a fundamental requirement of being statistically literate and associated skills are needed in almost all walks of life. Despite this, previous work shows that non-expert-like thinking in statistical reasoning is common, even after instruction.

Longitudinal Study of Student Attitudes in a Biology Program.

This is among the first longitudinal studies to report student attitudes across 4 yr of a university program. We found that the attitudes of students in biology become significantly more expert-like from the first year to the fourth year of the program, that is, there was a significant positive shift in students' overall percent favorable scores from 64.5 to 72%, as opposed to the expert response, which averaged 90%.

Development of the Biological Experimental Design Concept Inventory (BEDCI).

Interest in student conception of experimentation inspired the development of a fully validated 14-question inventory on experimental design in biology (BEDCI) by following established best practices in concept inventory (CI) design. This CI can be used to diagnose specific examples of non-expert-like thinking in students and to evaluate the success of teaching strategies that target conceptual changes. We used BEDCI to diagnose non-expert-like student thinking in experimental design at the pre- and posttest stage in five courses (total n = 580 students) at a large research university in western Canada.