When campuses across the world needed to transition to the online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many challenges educators faced, and addressing academic integrity issues were some of the most important. Certain strategies, such as online proctoring or additional software, were not available to most institutions because the…

Effective assessment is an extremely important area of chemistry education. Typically tests measure students' knowledge of critical thinking skills, chemistry vocabulary, and application of concepts from one chapter to another. While it is relatively straightforward to measure concepts such as chemical vocabulary and algorithmic problem solving…

After receiving many anecdotes about student cheating and plagiarism in online and remote classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, the School of Mathematics and Science (SOMS) at the Community College of Baltimore County convened an Academic Integrity Committee to investigate these issues. A survey was sent to SOMS faculty members to determine their…

Historically, the implementation of research-based assessments (RBAs) has been a driver of educational change within physics and helped motivate adoption of interactive engagement pedagogies. Until recently, RBAs were given to students exclusively on paper and in class; however, this approach has important drawbacks including decentralized data…

Students often complain about their perceived disconnect between the time and effort spent studying and their subsequent performance on exams. Robert Bjork's research asserts that retrieval of stored information acts as a memory modifier, and that using tests as learning events creates "desirable difficulties that enhance learning."…

The National Union of Students (NUS) National Student Experience Report identified examination feedback as an area where students had particular concerns. This finding was echoed in the authors' institution and triggered an action research project to investigate ways of improving students' perceptions of pre- and post-exam feedback. We report the…

Pre- and postcourse assessment has become a very important tool for education research in physics and other areas. The web offers an attractive alternative to in-class paper administration, but concerns about web-based administration include reliability due to changes in medium, student compliance rates, and test security, both question leakage…

Preliminary pilot studies and a field study show how a generalizable conceptual framework calibrated with item response modeling can be used to describe the development of student conceptual understanding in chemistry. ChemQuery is an assessment system that uses a framework of the key ideas in the discipline, called the Perspectives of Chemists,…

Providing fair assessment with timely feedback for students is a difficult task with science laboratory classes containing large numbers of students. Throughout our Faculty, such classes are assessed by short-answer questions (SAQs) centred on principles encountered in the laboratory. We have shown recently that computer-assisted assessment (CAA)…

Describes an easy-to-use set of computer programs for the generation of multiple-choice and essay examinations in an introductory astronomy course. Program enables the user to establish files of test questions and to rapidly assemble printed copies of examinations suitable for photocopying. (Author/GS)

Recent research studies have reported on how novices and experts differ in storing, organizing, and retrieving subject matter knowledge and on how they apply their knowledge to solve new problems. These findings have been integrated and implemented in a computer environment to help novices improve their problem-solving skills. An outline of this…

Formative computer-based assessments (CBAs) for self-instruction were introduced into a Year-2 field biology module. These CBAs were provided in "tutorial" mode where each question had context-related diagnostic feedback and tutorial pages, and a self-test mode where the same CBA returned only a score. The summative assessments remained…

Reports on a study designed to determine whether or not biology students were being disadvantaged by taking computer tests instead of written paper forms of the same tests. Results indicated that mean scores on computer-administered and written forms of the same test were approximately equivalent. (TW)