Assessing Student Analytical and Graphical Skills in Introductory Economics as a Tool of Early Intervention System.

UNITED States. Dept. of Education; ANALYTICAL skills; BLOOM'S taxonomy; HIGHER education standards; GRADE point average; ANALYSIS of covariance; SYSTEM failures

The U.S. Department of Education advocates strongly using assessment of student learning as a means of maintaining high standards of education. Instructors use mostly multiple choice and discussion questions as assessment tools. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple-choice and discussion questions and participant variables in assessing student analytical and graphical skills. Additionally, the aim was to explore the potential utilization of these assessment outcomes within an early intervention system. The instructor conducted three examinations, consisting multiple-choice and discussion questions, covering seven chapters in two introductory economics classes. Approximately 244 student examination artifacts were collected, and categorized based on scores on multiple-choice analytical, multiple-choice graphical, discussion analytical, and discussion graphical questions. Additionally, a survey was administered to collect information on challenges that students faced and participant variables of grade point average (GPA), race, and motivation. The instructor also attended workshops on growth, purpose, and sense of belonging (GPS) mindset; Bloom's taxonomy and writing intensive that were integral elements of the early intervention system. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, chisquare, and analysis of covariance tests were used. The results indicate that struggling students had a mean GPA of 2.44 or below, implying that the GPA helped identify struggling students. The GPS mindset helped identify key challenges that individual students faced, Bloom's taxonomy aided in clarifying assignment questions and comprehension, and writing intensive assignments helped improve performance on discussion questions. The early intervention system reduced failure rates by half, indicating that the integration of these four elements improved learning outcomes for struggling students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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