Insight into student reasoning using Online Reasoning Chain Construction Assessments (ORCCA)

An emerging body of research has shown that, even after research-based instruction, students who demonstrate correct conceptual understanding and reasoning on one task often fail to use the same knowledge and skills on related tasks. These observations can be accounted for by dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR), which assert that human cognition relies on two thinking processes. The first, the heuristic process, is fast, intuitive, and automatic, while the second, the analytic process, is slow, effortful, and deliberate. In this talk, we will describe a multi-institutional interdiscipinary research project in which we are developing Online Reasoning Chain Construction Assessment (ORCCA) tools. These tools allow students to build an explanation for the answer to a question by selecting from a number of true statements about the task at hand. We will illustrate how these tasks can be used to better illuminate student reasoning, especially the ways in which modifications to the information available to students may affect the reasoning chains they produce.