Purpose

The Genetics Concept Assessment (GCA) is designed to test achievement of nine broad learning goals in majors and non-majors undergraduate genetics courses.

Population

The GCA is commonly administered in introductory college genetics courses.

Typical Performance

We haven't performed an analysis of the LASSO data for typical performance, but the developers of the instrument students found pretest scores around 40% and posttest scores around 74% across the 3 institutions the instrument was initially tested at.

Validity

The GCA was originally developed in 2008. The validation has focussed on college students but spans several institutions. Items were examined for difficulty, discrimination, and assessment reliability. Relevant articles are listed below:

• Smith, M. K., Wood, W. B., & Knight, J. K. (2008). The genetics concept assessment: a new concept inventory for gauging student understanding of genetics. CBE-life sciences Education, 7(4), 422-430.

Research

There are over 260 publications that cite the GCA. We recommend using Google Scholar and the citations listed under validation to find articles of interest.

Example LASSO Report

Please follow this link to our example report for concept inventories.

Similar Instruments

Concept Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS)

Introductory Molecular and Cell Biology Assessment (IMCA)

Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) - Biology

More Information

N/A