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This dissertation focuses on investigating undergraduate students' problem-solving abilities in the challenging domain of proton (1H) NMR spectroscopy and aims to develop an effective assessment tool to evaluate students' conceptual knowledge in this area. The study is divided into two distinct phases to comprehensively explore and address the research objectives. In the first phase, qualitative interviews were conducted with undergraduate students to delve into their problem-solving approaches when confronted with a proton NMR task. Also, this study aimed to identify common alternative conceptions that students demonstrate during proton NMR problem-solving. The second phase of the study involved the development of an NMR concept inventory, meticulously designed to serve as a robust assessment tool for evaluating students' conceptual understanding of proton NMR. This dissertation presents a detailed and systematic account of the step-by-step process employed in crafting the concept inventory. The inventory places particular emphasis on assessing students' comprehension of fundamental concepts such as signal counting, splitting, and chemical shift, as well as their ability to effectively integrate these concepts to solve complex problems associated with proton NMR. This research makes significant contributions to the field of chemistry education by advancing our understanding of undergraduate students' problem-solving approaches within the realm of proton NMR spectroscopy. Moreover, the development of the NMR concept inventory offers a reliable and valid tool for accurately assessing students' conceptual knowledge in this challenging subject matter. Consequently, this dissertation presents a comprehensive exploration of proton NMR problem solving, providing valuable insights and practical implications for enhancing teaching and learning practices in this specialized area of study.

Student misconceptions in science are common and may be present even for students who are academically successful. Concept inventories, multiple-choice tests in which the distractors map onto common, previously identified misconceptions, are commonly used by researchers and educators to gauge the prevalence of student misconceptions in science. Distractor analysis of concept inventory responses could be used to create profiles of individual student misconceptions which could provide deeper insight into the phenomenon and provide useful information for instructional planning, but this is rarely done as the inventories are not designed to facilitate it. Researchers in educational measurement have suggested that diagnostic cognitive models (DCMs) could be used to diagnose misconceptions and to create such misconception profiles. DCMs are multidimensional, confirmatory latent class models which are designed to measure the mastery/presence of fine-grained skills/attributes. By replacing the skills/attributes in the model with common misconceptions, DCMs could be used to filter students into misconception profiles based on their responses to concept inventory-like questions. A few researchers have developed new DCMs that are specifically designed to do this and have retrofitted data from existing concept inventories to them. However, cognitive diagnostic assessments, which are likely to display better model fit with DCMs, have not been developed. This project developed a cognitive diagnostic assessment to measure knowledge and misconceptions about Newton's laws and fitted it with the deterministic input noisy-and-gate (DINA) model. Experienced physics instructors assessed content validity and Q-matrix alignment. A pilot test with 100 undergraduates was conducted to assess item quality within a classical test theory framework. The final version of the assessment was field tested with 349 undergraduates. Results showed that response data displayed acceptable fit to the DINA model at the item level, but more questionable fit at the overall model level; that responses to selected items were similar to those given to two items from the Force Concept Inventory; and that, although all students were likely to have misconceptions, those with lower knowledge scores were more likely to have misconceptions.

Cybersecurity incidents are on the rise. Tracing these security breaches back, we linked them to people making an error due to a commonsense misconception. There is no one standard tool that gauges a student's understanding of security topics. In this research, we surveyed 75 security experts about security novices' misconceptions, coded the results, and identified 17 top misconceptions. We created open-ended questions and labs/active learning to identify and remediate those misconceptions. After revising the open-ended questions, we gave them to undergraduate students and successfully extracted real-world instances of the misconceptions in practice. We created a ten-question multiple-choice exam by converting the open-ended questions into multiple-choice with many distractors drawn from students' misconceptions. We then conducted "think-aloud interviews" with students to make sure that the questions were clear. After integrating their feedback, we administered multiple-choice exams to two groups of students; 114 CS 1 students with no formal security education and 28 students from a security course. Almost 30% of CS 1 students failed to answer more than one question correctly, and only 3.5% of CS 1 students passed with a score of 60 (a D-). However, only 21.4% of the security students passed, and no individual student got more than seven out of ten correct. Our results show that both groups of students have these common security misconceptions. While security students earned markedly higher scores, our test unequivocally shows that students are leaving the security course retaining significant misconceptions, pointing the way for improvements in teaching.

The aim of this research is to develop a measurement instrument that is valid and reliable, called the Middle School-Life Science Concept Inventory (MS-LSCI), for the purpose of measuring the life science conceptual understanding of middle school-level students. Although there are several existing concept inventories related to biology concepts (i.e. Secondary-Biology Concept Inventory (S-BCI) and Biology Concept Inventory (BCI)), there is no fully developed concept inventory available that collectively measures the major life science concepts covered in middle school classrooms (Klymkowsky, Underwood, & Garvin-Doxas, 2010; Stammen, Lan, Schuchaerdt, Malone, Ding, Sabree, & Boone, 2016). Study one focuses on how data from a multi-panel expert review and student interviews were used in the Middle School-Life Science’s (MS-LSCI) item content qualitative validation and iterative refinement process. Of the 50 questions reviewed by the expert panels, 12 items were identified as having content validity concerns. Generally, these content validity concerns fell within two categories: (i) imprecise phrasing and (ii) age inappropriateness. During the student interviews, a total of 26 items were identified as displaying content validity issues. These 26 items fell into one of three categories: (i) imprecise phrasing, (ii) contextual ambiguity, and (iii) formatting/diagrammatic complexity. Using the data from the multi-panel expert review and student interviews, the items with content validity concerns were refined and modified before the items were field tested. Study two describes the MS-LSCI’s quantitative validation and item selection process. Specifically, this study focuses on the psychometric functioning of the 60 field-tested MS-LSCI items using Rasch analysis. The results of this development, refinement, and evaluation process suggest that the 25-item MS-LSCI is a valid instrument in that the items appear to be unidimensional, item and person measures display little misfit, and the reliability values suggest replicability within the targeted sample. Based on these results, the MS-LSCI has the potential to help fill the gap in the assessment tools available to measure middle school student life science concepts in conjunction with alternative conceptions. Study three describes the difference among 6th, 7th, and 8th graders’ performance on the MS-LSCI’s 60 field tested items. The results suggest that MS-LSCI performance was significantly lower for 6th graders relative to 8th graders and that six items can be linked to this difference in performance. These six items fell within the MS-LSCI’s core concepts of evolution and diversity, population interaction, and growth and reproduction. More importantly, these six items shed light on the contextual differences between 6th and 8th grade performance. The contextualized item differences discovered in this study may be attributed to middle school life science curriculum sequencing and the perseverance of specific alternative conceptions.

Graphics education has been a central component in the engineering course of study. As technology advances, so have the methods in which graphics are expressed and practiced. Though the of media of graphics education have evolved, the concepts of the field remain relatively consistent. Tools are needed to measure students’ comprehension, regardless of current instructional practices. Concept inventories are an example of such a tool that can be used in graphics education to provide a stable mechanism of gauging student understanding. Concept inventories are assessment instruments that can be used to help identify concepts that students understand, and identify which misconceptions are most prevalent. Concept inventories can also be used in an evaluative manner to aid in course design and assessment. Concept inventories have been developed for other fields and have found to lead to curriculum and pedagogical reform. Currently, there is no widespread agreed upon and validated instrument to use in engineering graphics and related courses to assess learning of fundamental concepts.This study describes the first recorded attempt at the development of a concept inventory for engineering graphics on a national scale. Using established methods for instrument development as guidelines, a concept inventory for engineering graphics was created. The final version of the instrument consists of thirty items that measure understanding across five fundamental concepts. Additional statistical analysis of the data will provide guidance on efficient use of the instrument in the future.

Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) courses are critical for any computer science curriculum. DSA courses emphasize concepts related to procedural dynamics and Algorithm Analysis (AA). These concepts are hard for students to grasp when conveyed using traditional textbook material relying on text and static images. Algorithm Visualizations (AVs) emerged as a technique for conveying DSA concepts using interactive visual representations. Historically, AVs have dealt with portraying algorithm dynamics, and the AV developer community has decades of successful experience with this. But there exist few visualizations to present algorithm analysis concepts. This content is typically still conveyed using text and static images. We have devised an approach that we term Algorithm Analysis Visualizations (AAVs), capable of conveying AA concepts visually. In AAVs, analysis is presented as a series of slides where each statement of the explanation is connected to visuals that support the sentence. We developed a pool of AAVs targeting the basic concepts of AA. We also developed AAVs for basic sorting algorithms, providing a concrete depiction about how the running time analysis of these algorithms can be calculated. To evaluate AAVs, we conducted a quasi-experiment across two offerings of CS3114 at Virginia Tech. By analyzing OpenDSA student interaction logs, we found that intervention group students spent significantly more time viewing the material as compared to control group students who used traditional textual content. Intervention group students gave positive feedback regarding the usefulness of AAVs to help them understand the AA concepts presented in the course. In addition, intervention group students demonstrated better performance than control group students on the AA part of the final exam. The final exam taken by both the control and intervention groups was based on a pilot version of the Algorithm Analysis Concept Inventory (AACI) that was developed to target fundamental AA concepts and probe students' misconceptions about these concepts. The pilot AACI was developed using a Delphi process involving a group of DSA instructors, and was shown to be a valid and reliable instrument to gauge students' understanding of the basic AA topics.

Recursion is one of the most important and hardest topics in lower division computer science courses. As it is an advanced programming skill, the best way to learn it is through targeted practice exercises. But the best practice problems are hard to grade. As a consequence, students experience only a small number of problems. The dearth of feedback to students regarding whether they understand the material compounds the difficulty of teaching and learning CS2 topics. We present a new way for teaching such programming skills. Students view examples and visualizations, then practice a wide variety of automatically assessed, small-scale programming exercises that address the sub-skills required to learn recursion. The basic recursion tutorial (RecurTutor) teaches material typically encountered in CS2 courses. The advanced recursion in binary trees tutorial (BTRecurTutor) covers advanced recursion techniques most often encountered post CS2. It provides detailed feedback on the students' programming exercise answers by performing semantic code analysis on the student's code. Experiments showed that RecurTutor supports recursion learning for CS2 level students. Students who used RecurTutor had statistically significant better grades on recursion exam questions than did students who used a typical instruction. Students who experienced RecurTutor spent statistically significant more time on solving programming exercises than students who experienced typical instruction, and came out with a statistically significant higher confidence level. As a part of our effort in enhancing recursion learning, we have analyzed about 8000 CS2 exam responses on basic recursion questions. From those we discovered a collection of frequently repeated misconceptions, which allowed us to create a draft concept inventory that can be used to measure student's learning of basic recursion skills. We analyzed about 600 binary tree recursion programming exercises from CS3 exam responses. From these we found frequently recurring misconceptions. The main goal of this work is to enhance the learning of recursion. On one side, the recursion tutorials aim to enhance student learning of this topic through addressing the main misconceptions and allow students to do enough practice. On the other side, the recursion concept inventory assesses independently student learning of recursion regardless of the instructional methods.

Previous literature regarding students' understandings about oxidation-reduction reactions has focused primarily on students' understandings at the symbolic domain, while literature regarding students' understandings about electrochemical cells has focused primarily on the particulate domain. This study attempts to explore the gap in the literature between students' symbolic oxidation-reduction understandings and particulate electrochemistry understandings by investigating students' understandings of multiple representations of oxidation-reduction reactions using sequential exploratory mixed-methods study. In the first phase of this study, students' misconceptions about oxidation-reduction at the symbolic, macroscopic, and particulate domains were elicited through qualitative research methods, and the results of this phase were used to create a concept inventory to measure students' understandings on a large scale in a quick and efficient manner. Six major misconceptions themes emerged during the students' interviews including 1) oxidation numbers, 2) surface features of the chemical representations, 3) electron transfer processes, 4) the role of the spectator ion, 5) the particulate and dynamic reaction process, and 6) charges & bonding. Using these themes, the Redox Concept Inventory (ROXCI) was developed and each item response choice was created based upon students' responses from the interviews. Therefore, the ROXCI is inherently designed to measure students' understandings. The ROXCI went through several rounds of revisions and evidence for the content validity, response process validity, test-criterion validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability are presented. The ROXCI was answered by more than 2000 students throughout the course of this study, and in the final round of implementations, the ROXCI was administered to over 1000 students in a national study. While previous studies have identified students' oxidation-reduction misconceptions in qualitative studies, the ROXCI study is the first to present students' misconceptions on a national scale. The students' results provide evidence that the ROXCI can be used as a formative assessment of students' understandings about oxidation-reduction misconceptions. Future studies should develop pedagogy to target students' misconceptions in the classroom.

The abstract nature of bonding poses several challenges as some students struggle to identify the ionic and covalent nature of bonds within a variety of compounds. The topic is formally introduced in both middle school and secondary education (grades 6-12) and reintroduced in the undergraduate general chemistry curriculum. Teachers use multiple representations to communicate the concepts of bonding, including Lewis Structures, formulas, spacefilling models, and 3D manipulatives. As students learn to interpret these multiple representations, they may develop misconceptions that can create a problem in further learning of chemistry. Therefore, representations of chemical structures are useful to elicit student ideas of chemical bonding by interviewing students about the features of the models as they pertain to bonding.Students enrolled in high school physical science, high school chemistry, and general chemistry were interviewed using a five-phase semi-structured protocol focused on multiple representations to explore students’ ideas about covalent and ionic bonding. Four themes emerged through constant comparative analysis for describing bond type: periodic trends, electrostatic interactions, octet rule, and representation surface features. The qualitative findings were used to develop the Bonding Representations Inventory (BRI) to determine the prevalence of the misconceptions. The BRI was administered to 1072 high school chemistry, advanced placement chemistry, and general chemistry students across the United States. Content validity was determined through expert validation of the items, and concurrent validity was established with the three groups of students. Reliability was determined through individual item analysis and through Ferguson’s δ. The BRI can be used in high school and general chemistry classrooms to inform teaching of both bonding and representations.Additional research was conducted in inorganic chemistry education (Appendix A): Creating an Inorganic Symmetry POGIL Activity. Many students struggle when mentally rotating and visualizing three dimensional structures. This skill is important for learning symmetry, which is foundational for other topics in inorganic chemistry. Process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning (POGIL) was used to structure the activity using a learning cycle paradigm and consistent with Novak’s human constructivism theory. The activity was tested in an Inorganic course at Miami University and published in the Journal of Chemical Education (Luxford, Crowder, & Bretz, 2012).

This research was undertaken to investigate the assessment of the spatial visualization skills of first-year engineering students. This research was conducted through three approaches: (1) a review of cogent research framed by a spatial visualization matrix, (2) the development and validation of an Engineering Graphics Concept Inventory, and (3) an investigation into the relationship into the correlations between 3D modeling skills and performance on the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations (PSVT:R) and the Mental Cutting Test (MCT). The literature reviewed spans the field of published research from the early 1930's to the present. This review expands and provides a new direction on published research as it is viewed through the lenses of the four common pedagogical approaches to teaching spatial visualization: the standard approach, the remedial approach, computer-aided design, and the theory-informed approach. A spatial visualization matrix of criteria was developed to evaluate each of the methods. The four principle criteria included: learning outcomes, active and engaged learning, stage of knowledge, and explanatory power. Key findings from the literature review indicate the standard method is not the most effective method to teaching spatial visualization while the theory-informed method as evaluated by the matrix is the most effective pedagogical approach of the four methods evaluated. The next phase of this research focused on the two-year development, validation, and reliability of an Engineering Graphics Concept Inventory given to over 1300 participants from three universities. A Delphi method was used to determine the key concepts identified by the expert panel to be included in the inventory. A student panel of 20 participants participated in the pilot study of "think aloud" protocols to refine inventory test items and to generate the appropriate distractors. Multiple pilot studies coupled with a detailed psychometric analysis provided the feedback and direction needed for the adjustment of test items. The reported Cronbach's α for the final instrument is .73, which is within the acceptable range. The inventory is ready to be implemented and the predictability of the instrument, in reference to students' spatial visualization skills, to be researched. The final chapter of this research was a correlational study of the relationship between first-year engineering student's 3D modeling frameworks and their performance on the PSVT:R and the MCT. 3D modeling presence in graphical communications has steadily increased over the last 15 years; however there has been little research on the correlations between the standard visualization tests and 3D modeling. 220 first-year engineering students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University participated in the study in the fall of 2011. The main findings from this research indicate there is no significant correlational relationship between the PSVT:R and a student's 3D modeling ability, but there is one for the MCT. The significant correlational factors reported for the MCT and modeling aptitude for the three assignments are: r = .32 (p < 0.05), .36 (p< 0.01), and .47 (p< 0.01). These findings may be used by undergraduate educators and course administrators to more effectively organize engineering graphics education to yield students with deeper, more meaningful knowledge about engineering graphics and its inherent connection throughout the engineering curriculum. Together these three studies represent a sequential exploratory mixed methods approach that intertwines qualitative interviews and observations to frame the quantitative instrument and data collection. Results of this study can be used to guide the assessment of incoming freshmen engineering students, and the modification and development of engineering graphics courses.

Enzyme-substrate interactions are a concept that spans various topics in biochemistry and molecular biology (e.g., kinetics, metabolism, and translation), and there are a vast amount of representations used to teach this concept that lack common conventions. Deficiencies in understanding of enzyme-substrate interactions or lack thereof could hinder students’ understandings of later concepts in biochemistry. However, prior to this dissertation, there was no way to efficiently measure students’ understandings of enzyme-substrate interactions. Therefore, this dissertation set out to (1) investigate biochemistry students’ understandings of enzyme-substrate interactions and how multiple representations of the phenomena influence the understanding and (2) use misconceptions uncovered to create the Enzyme-Substrate Interactions Concept Inventory (ESICI) to allow for efficient measurement of students’ understandings. Multiple theoretical frameworks guided the development, collection, and analysis of the data in this dissertation. A sequential mixed methods design was used to address the aims of this dissertation. This design consisted of student interviews using multiple representations to elicit students’ understandings of enzyme-substrate interactions, followed by the development of the ESICI based on the findings from the interviews. The ESICI was subsequently administered to 707 students at 16 institutions from across the United States. Students were found to have a range of prior knowledge that they used to interpret the representations. The use of multiple representations provided evidence of cognitive dissonance, representational competence, and misconceptions. The ESICI further provided evidence of misconceptions, the most significant being students’ sole focus on electronic complementarity and students’ lack of energetic understanding of enzyme-substrate interactions. The findings from this dissertation could be used in the classroom to measure students’ understanding of enzyme-substrate interactions prior to instruction of the concept and to use representations in a more connected, purposeful way. While the focus of this dissertation is the work regarding students’ understandings of enzyme-substrate interactions, additional work was completed in the area of biophysical chemistry and is presented in Appendix A- What is the True Color of Fresh Meat? A Biophysical Undergraduate Laboratory Experiment Investigating the Effects of Ligand Binding on Myoglobin Using Optical, EPR, and NMR Spectroscopy.

The Student-Centered Active Learning in Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) approach to instructional design was adapted with the goal of delivering more effective statics, dynamics and multivariate calculus instruction and integrated course curricula. Inquiry-based learning exercises were designed, incorporating material from statics and dynamics into multivariable calculus, and vice-versa, as well as integrating statics and dynamics into one course. Analysis included an exploration of student study habits, multiple measures of course effectiveness, and an examination of curricular effects. Challenges of implementation are also discussed. Study habits of students in an integrated Statics and Dynamics course were assessed through a voluntary survey in order to determine which practices are the most helpful to the students. These data indicated that there are three distinct behavior patterns for these students (Help Seeker, Supplemental Instruction Dependent, and Minimalist), which lead to different levels of conceptual understanding of the material. The effectiveness of the revised course designs and activities were assessed using a mixed method approach. Student performance in these courses and in follow-on courses was used to measure improvements in concept retention. Conceptual tests (Statics and Dynamics Concept Inventories) were administered before and after semesters, and average normalized gains were compared with those for students in traditional learning environments. Open-ended questions on end-of-semester course evaluations assessed student perceptions of the course format. Results indicate increases in conceptual measures in statics with SCALE-UP, significant reductions in failure rates for students in the integrated statics/dynamics course, and reduction in time to completion of statics and dynamics courses. Survey data indicate positive effects on students' use of learning resources, and anecdotal evidence demonstrates that students are continuing the patterns of peer instruction and positive interdependence in follow-on courses. Based on these research findings, faculty development materials were generated that concisely state the pedagogical underpinnings of the method, provide evidence of success in our courses, and identify key aspects of successful implementation of SCALE-UP in engineering courses. These include effective use of learning assistants, well-designed learning activities, and formative assessment questions that emphasize learning objectives and guided inquiry. Course materials have been published, and efforts are under way to promote this as a mainstream teaching resource. Mechanical Engineering students in both the old and new curricula (n= 316 and 366, respectively) were tracked to glean information about the paths students take as they progress through their degree program and the effects that the new integrated course has had on these paths. For each student, the number of attempts and grades for the courses of interest were recorded. Results indicate nearly the same proportion of students pass the integrated dynamics and statics course on their first attempt as pass both the separate courses on their first attempt at Clemson University. Students in the new curriculum are less likely to quit before completing the course sequence. As expected, it takes students less attempts to pass the new course than to pass both the old courses. Details regarding implementation of this course are discussed. Challenges to achieving success in this new course have been many and demanding. These include (1) development of a dedicated textbook, (2) development of learning exercises to foster student comprehension, (3) reorganization of topical content including topic deletion and added emphasis on certain topics, (4) preparing faculty for change, (5) accommodating limited student maturity, and (6) dealing with widespread misgivings about the project.

The structure of education has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Despite major changes in how students are learning, there has not been as dramatic of a shift in how student learning is assessed. Standard letter grades are still the paradigm for evaluating a student's mastery of course content and the grade point average is still one of the largest determining factors in judging a graduate's academic aptitude. This research presents a modern approach to modeling knowledge and evaluating students. Based upon the model of a closed-loop feedback controller it considers education as a system with an instructor determining the set of knowledge he or she wishes to impart to students, the instruction method as a transfer function, and evaluation methods serving as sensors to provide feedback determining the subset of the information students have learned. This method uses comprehensive concept maps to depict all of the concepts and relationships an educator intends to cover and student maps to depict the subset of knowledge that students have mastered. Concept inventories are used as an assessment tool to determine, at the conceptual level, what students have learned. Each question in the concept inventory is coupled with one or more components of a comprehensive concept map and based upon the answers students give to concept inventory questions those components may or may not appear in a student's knowledge map. The level of knowledge a student demonstrates of each concept and relationship is presented in his or her student map using a color scheme tied to the levels of learning in Bloom's taxonomy. Topological principles are used to establish metrics to quantify the distance between two students' knowledge maps and the distance between a student's knowledge map and the corresponding comprehensive concept map. A method is also developed for forming aggregate maps representative of the knowledge of a group of students. Aggregate maps can be formed for entire classes of students or based upon various demographics including race and gender. XML schemas have been used throughout this research to encapsulate the information in both comprehensive maps and student maps and to store correlations between concept inventory questions and corresponding comprehensive map components. Three software packages have been developed to store concept inventories into an XML Schema, to process student responses to concept inventory questions and generate student maps as a result, and to generate aggregate maps. The methods presented herein have been applied to two learning units that are part of two freshman engineering courses at Virginia Tech. Example student maps and aggregate maps are included for these course units.

Information Scaffolding is a user-centered approach to information design; a method devised to aid "everyday" authors in information composition. Information Scaffolding places a premium on audience-centered documents by emphasizing the information needs and motivations of a multimedia document's intended audience. The aim of this method is to structure information in such a way that an intended audience can gain a fuller understanding of the information presented and is able to incorporate knowledge for future use. Information Scaffolding looks to strengthen the quality of a document's impact both on the individual and on the broader, ongoing disciplinary discussion, by better couching a document's contents in a manner relevant to the user.Thus far, instructional research design has presented varying suggested guidelines for the design of multimedia instructional materials (technical animations, dynamic computer simulations, etc.), primarily do's and don'ts. The unique difference here is that Information Scaffolding is suggesting an initial methodology designed to address the information and educational needs of a document's intended audience. Information Scaffolding is an adaptation of well-established user-centered design approaches applied to information design in an attempt to provide "everyday" authors with a flexible and yet structured procedure for how to construct "everyday" documents capable of improving knowledge transfer.The Information Scaffolding method is characterized by 3-pillars. The first is a learning primer designed to inform "everyday" authors about a few key concepts related to learning, including the number of cells in the brain and the roles of prior knowledge and attention in learning. The second is a set of methods which help "everyday" authors begin to construct audience-centered documents, tailored to a unique audience. The two key methods for audience assessment are the concept inventory and the audience demography. The third is a set of 7 design heuristics which are suggested design principles aid the author with information design. These 7 principles are: Information Metaphor, Conceptual Chunking/Information Density, Wayfinding & Navigation, Prioritization of Key Information, Temporal & Spatial Relationships, Global & Local Perspectives and finally the use of Complementary Media.This dissertation is an introduction to and analysis of the Information Scaffolding method as applied to the design and construction of short technical animation projects. This dissertation begins with an introduction to the foundations of the Information Scaffolding method. The second portion of the dissertation is devoted to the evaluation of the Technical Animation Research Study, which uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The dissertation concludes with a revision of the Information Scaffolding method presented in light of the study's results.How and under what circumstances does the Information Scaffolding approach aid in the construction of technical animations? The evaluation of the Information Scaffolding method is a simple author-directed, user-centered approach to improved understanding, and begins in this dissertation by looking at the technical animation process and products from three perspectives:1. Author Scaffolding. Scaffolded Design Implementation: How do the authors implement the Information Scaffolding Framework?2. End Users/Intended Audience - Audience Perceptions & Comprehension. What are the perceptions and the degree of comprehension of the animations by audience members?3. Content Analysis: What characterizes the content of the finished product?Conclusions: When scaffolded projects were authored by students without formal scaffolding training, the scaffolded projects were more memorable than the unscaffolded projects (memory being the precursory step to learning). Participants also felt that the scaffolded projects provided a more complete description of the devices. Additionally, audience members estimated that they would need to watch scaffolded projects fewer times in order to be able to explain the assembly and operation of the described devices.After the characterization and ranking of test bed Technical Animation projects, the major insight was that groups who had a small number of well articulated message goals ranked best in all measures, including audience perception and comprehension, project grade and content analysis.The research study revealed opportunities for iterative improvement of the 2008 version of the Information Scaffolding methodology. The revised methodology includes: a learning primer reading requirement, a revamped set of questions for the audience demography, a document mission statement of purpose, and a more structured process for integrating the results of the concept inventory and audience assessment.Six new considerations presented themselves as a result of this study: Project Framing, Project Storyline, Time Design, Vocabulary & Nomenclature, Misperception & Misconception, Visual Distinction. Each of these concepts is represented in the Information Scaffolding methodology in a form accessible to the "everyday" author.

There is continued emphasis on increasing and improving genetics education for grades K-12, medical professionals, and the general public. An additional critical audience is the undergraduate student in introductory biology and genetics courses. There has been little effort to assess these students’ understanding of genetics concepts and their level of genetic literacy (i.e. genetics knowledge as it relates to and impacts their lives). We have developed, evaluated, and used a new survey instrument to assess the genetic literacy of undergraduate students taking introductory biology or genetics courses. The Genetic Literacy Concept Inventory (GLCI) is a 31-item multiple choice test that addresses 17 concepts identified as central to genetic literacy by a team of ASHG professional geneticists. The items were selected and modified based upon reviews by 25 genetic professionals and educators. The inventory underwent additional review in student focus groups and pilot testing. Analysis was carried out on content validity, discriminate validity, internal consistency, and stability of the inventory, with results indicating it is reasonably valid and reliable. The GLCI has been utilized pre-course and post-course in six introductory non-major biology and genetics courses, with over 350 students taking the inventory. Current data from students in introductory biology courses show a pre-course average of 41% correct. Post-course scores increased only modestly to an average of 48% in these courses which emphasized genetics to varying degrees. Even in an introductory genetics course the pre-course average of 54% increased to only 59%. These results are consistent with similar studies in physics and chemistry where concept inventories have been implemented in courses using more traditional teaching methods. This study directly enhances genetics education research by providing a valid and reliable instrument for assessing genetic literacy in undergraduate students. It also begins to look critically at current genetics education at the undergraduate level and suggests that to achieve genetic literacy, adjustments in the way we teach genetics may be necessary.