Social psychology (psychology)/Assessment/Exam/Instructor notes


 * An open-book, 3-hour exam, 150-item exam was reasonable successful
 * Average mark was 71%
 * In previous years the exam had been too hard (not enough time; 2 hours); added one hour (2 → 3 hours)
 * Reduced draft from 165 to 150 items
 * Redrafted and reselected the items in 2008.
 * Approximately 2 to 3 days was put in – quite a lot – to set this up even better for this year and the future.
 * There is still work to be done in this area
 * In 2009, prepare the items more continuously and systematically as part of tackling each topic.
 * Become more clear about whether the items are to be stored in Respondus or other format – currently Respondus files are the master, but this is somewhat inefficient in selecting items.
 * The 2007 idea was to create a large database with randomly selected items by topic area, using Respondus
 * In part, this is to allow the creation of random quizzes, etc. e.g., in Moodle
 * The 2008 idea is create a reasonably standard exam, and use the other items for a test bank which could be on Wikiversity and/or Moodle for each chapter
 * Moderated by: Melisah Feeney (see email comments)
 * Faculty review by: Laurie Grealish (see .doc comments)
 * Item length in many cases was reduced.
 * Item style was made more consistent e.g., with punctuation.
 * American spelling changed to Australian.
 * Manual formatting applied
 * Keep with next
 * Hanging indent for answers
 * Reviewed item response frequency analysis from 2007 and redrafted accordingly; some items were also further redrafted further away from the textbooks items.
 * Added items to cover extra Environmental and tutorial topics
 * Ch9 – Selection didn't match the Respondus allocation – re-allocate the Respondus allocation accordingly.
 * Ch10 – Attraction For items 104-110 no selection was made – adjust Respondus; instead selected 2 from 35-46
 * Ch11 – Selections didn't match Respondus; adjust Respondus
 * Ch12 – Selections didn't match Respondus; adjust Respondus
 * Process
 * Master databases by chapter/topic in Respondus
 * Planned number of items per topic (170)
 * Manually selected items per topic, based on Sets in Respondus
 * Manually merged and reordered items for exam draft
 * Removed 5 items to bring to 165 (didn't record which ones)
 * To do
 * This exam could/should be used as basis for future exams (build and improve on it)
 * Eventually further reduced to 150 items
 * Retrospectively create a 2008 Ch plan for the 150 items as the new Master. (see notes page in Ch plan)
 * Suggest re-using with relatively minor modification, based on:
 * Should get some up-front planning thought and on-going preparation during Semester
 * Check/concentrate more on lecture content (as I prepare each lecture).
 * Conduct item response analysis. Proof-reading could further reveal useful copy-edits.
 * Most efficient would probably be to revise the word processing version; making master adjustments in the Respondus database.
 * To find item numbers, text search the 165 item with codes draft from 2008 (could make a new one of these up).
 * Request to schedule this at a similar time as 2008 - preferably Fri am in the first week of exams in 6B4*. Alternatively it could be Wed or Thu am of exams.
 * Alternatively, this could be an ideal unit to deliver an online Moodle exam. However, to be fair, this would require either regular Moodle quizzed (by topic) or a practice exam.