Science educators have developed a variety of assessment techniques to help students connect their scientific knowledge and bridge conceptual gaps. In chemistry, concept maps and creative exercises are the two notable assessments that have been implemented into multiple chemistry courses and indicated promising effects on students’ conceptual learning and connection-making between chemistry concepts. These two assessment techniques were usually implemented individually in research studies. Herein, we employed a quasi-experimental, mixed-methods approach to explore whether combining concept maps and creative exercises would reveal any synergistic effects for student learning of chemical equilibrium and acid–base chemistry in a college general chemistry course. In this study, student perceptions of the use of the two assessments were examined by open-ended surveys. Interestingly, students perceived creative exercises as an assessment technique while concept maps were viewed as a learning tool for studying or reviewing exams. Additionally, Students believed that concept maps assisted them in answering creative exercises, but not vice versa. The four study groups (control group, concept maps only, creative exercises only, and both concept maps and creative exercises) were compared through concept inventory pre and post-test questions. The results of an ANCOVA indicated that participation in the experimental groups did not significantly impact conceptual learning gains, as measured by the concept inventory post-test scores. However, focus group interviews indicated students from the experimental group that used both concept maps and creative exercises were able to provide more sophisticated scientific explanations for conceptual questions related to the topics of chemical equilibrium and acid–base chemistry. Implications of these research results, best practices for implementation of the two assessments, and future research are discussed.

中文翻译：

---

耦合评估对化学平衡和酸碱化学中概念理解和建立连接的影响

科学教育工作者已经开发出各种评估技术，以帮助学生联系他们的科学知识并弥合概念上的空白。在化学领域，概念图和创造性练习是已在多个化学课程中实施的两个显着评估，它们对学生的概念学习和化学概念之间的联系产生了可喜的影响。这两种评估技术通常在研究中单独实施。本文中，我们采用了一种准实验性的混合方法方法，探索将概念图和创造性练习相结合是否会揭示出学生在大学普通化学课程中学习化学平衡和酸碱化学的任何协同效应。在这个研究中，通过开放式调查，调查了学生对两种评估方法的使用情况。有趣的是，学生将创意练习视为一种评估技术，而概念图则被视为学习或复习考试的学习工具。此外，学生认为概念图有助于他们进行创造性练习，但不能反之亦然。通过概念清单测试前和测试后问题比较了四个研究组（对照组，仅概念图，仅创意练习以及概念图和创意练习）。ANCOVA的结果表明，通过概念清单测试后分数来衡量，参加实验组并没有显着影响概念学习收益。但是，焦点小组访谈表明，使用概念图和创造性练习的实验组学生能够为与化学平衡和酸碱化学相关的概念性问题提供更复杂的科学解释。讨论了这些研究结果的含义，两次评估实施的最佳实践以及未来的研究。