We are happy to announce a new lab publication that examined how exam characteristics impact student performance. We found that women and low socioeconomic status students underperform on introductory biology course exams that have more cognitively challenging questions compared to men and middle/high socioeconomic status students, respectively. We also found that low socioeconomic status students do not perform as well as middle/high socioeconomic status students on exams that have more open-ended questions (e.g. essays and short answers).
This was work headed up by Christian Wright when he was a postdoc in the lab. Special thanks also goes out to collaborators Sarah Eddy and Mary Pat Wenderoth for all their hard work on the project. Congrats to Christian on his first first author publication in biology education research!
To check out the publication, click here.
For an ASU Now news release on the paper, click here.
For an EurekAlert post about the article, click here.
To see Sara's interview at MedicalResearch.com about this study, click here.