Automated Analysis of Constructed Response (AACR) Research Group
Automated Analysis of Constructed Response (AACR) Research Group
As students learn scientific concepts, they often have a mix of scientific and non-scientific ideas that they struggle to integrate. Constructed response questions – in which students must explain phenomena in their own words – provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their proficiency and also can reveal their mixed ideas.
Over years of research and development, the Automated Analysis of Constructed Response (AACR) collaboration has applied computerized analysis techniques, like machine learning, to evaluate student constructed responses. From this research, we've built tools like the Constructed Response Classifier (or CRC tool). These tools are freely accessible at the project website (https://beyondmultiplechoice.org/), making it possible for you to easily evaluate your students' responses.
I was a first generation college student and came to MSU as an undergraduate interested in STEM. In that first year, I had the typical experience of introductory STEM courses: hundreds of students in large, impersonal lectures taught by faculty who, while experts in their disciplines, were not trained to teach. I became one of the 45% of students who leave STEM for other fields because of poor pedagogy.
As a result, my career focus has been on using a variety of technologies to improve undergraduate STEM education, starting with instructional television in the early 1980’s and transitioning to computers in the mid-1980’s, when I moved to the Computer Science department at MSU. My experience teaching computer science convinced me that instructional design was more important than the technology, motivating me to complete a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and using that as the foundation for the design of Computing Concepts and Competencies, CSE 101 (see Teaching). The success we had using technology-based performance assessments provided the foundation for my research program that focuses on using technology to support more authentic assessments.
In 2006 I founded the Automated Analysis of Constructed Response (AACR) research group with my colleague John Merrill. As students learn scientific concepts, they often have a mix of scientific and non-scientific ideas that they struggle to integrate. Constructed response questions – in which students must explain phenomena in their own words – provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their proficiency and also can reveal their mixed ideas.