Modifying the ASPECT Survey to Support the Validity of Student Perception Data from Different Active Learning...

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Higher Education Pedagogy

Background:

• Student engagement and performance are linked to perceptions of active learning.
• The Assessing Student Engagement in Class Tool (ASPECT) was developed to measure these perceptions.
• Initial use of ASPECT in new active learning environments showed it did not function as expected.

Purpose of the Study:

• To adapt and validate the ASPECT measure for two distinct active learning strategies in an introductory biology course.
• To investigate the internal structure and response process validity of modified ASPECT (mASPECT) versions.

Main Methods:

• Modified existing ASPECT items and created new ones to develop two mASPECT versions tailored to specific active learning strategies.
• Collected data from students after participating in a deliberative democracy (DD) activity and a clicker-based session.
• Analyzed data using cognitive interviews for response process validity and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for internal structure validity.

Main Results:

• For the DD activity, 17 items formed 3 factors: personal effort, value of the environment, and instructor contribution.
• For the clicker session, 21 items formed 4 factors: 3 similar to DD, plus social influence.
• The factor structures differed significantly between the two active learning environments.

Conclusions:

• The same measurement tool may not function identically across different active learning environments, even with the same student population.
• It is crucial to gather validity evidence when adopting or adapting existing measures for new contexts.
• This study underscores the importance of context-specific validation for educational assessment tools.