A working group of the RSC Education Division Council is completing an analysis of the assessment landscape and how it changed as a result of COVID. The task is to: survey the changes that occurred in assessment of chemistry in post-secondary education, to identify commentary on implementation from these in practice, and to share this practice back with the community, with the (explicit) intention of encouraging a broader assessment profile in chemistry. All educators involved in post-secondary teaching are invited to complete the survey, which can be accessed at the link below. The deadline for completion is 23rd April 2021….
Tag: assessment
My ten favourite #chemed articles of 2015
This post is a sure-fire way to lose friends… but I’m going to pick 10 papers that were published this year that I found interesting and/or useful. This is not to say they are ten of the best; everyone will have their own 10 “best” based on their own contexts. Caveats done, here are 10 papers on chemistry education research that stood out for me this year: 0. Text messages to explore students’ study habits (Ye, Oueini, Dickerson, and Lewis, CERP) I was excited to see Scott Lewis speak at the Conference That Shall Not Be Named during the summer as I really love…
The feedback dilemma
Read the opening gambit of any educational literature on feedback. It will likely report that while feedback is desired by students, considered important by academics, and in the era of rankings, prioritized by universities, it largely goes unread and unused. Many reports state that students only look at the number grade, ignoring the comments unless it is substantially different from what they expected. Often students don’t realise that the feedback comments on one assignment can help with the next. Why is this? Looking through the literature on this topic, the crux of the problem is a dilemma about what academics think feedback actually…
This week I’m reading… Changing STEM education
Summer is a great time for Good Intentions and Forward Planning… with that in mind I’ve been reading about what way we teach chemistry, how we know it’s not the best approach, and what might be done to change it. Is changing the curriculum enough? Bodner (1992) opens his discussion on reform in chemistry education writes that “recent concern”, way back in 1992, is not unique. He states that there are repeated cycles of concern about science education over the 20th century, followed by long periods of complacency. Scientists and educators usually respond in three ways: restructure the curriculum, attract…
Plagiarism: Detection, Prevention, Monitoring
I attended the National Forum for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning seminar on plagiarism organised by Kevin O’Rourke at DIT’s Learning Teaching and Technology Centre. The meeting was interesting as it covered three aspects of plagiarism (in my opinion): Plagiarism detection Designing out plagiarism through various L&T methods Institutional and national profiling of extents of plagiarism Plagiarism detection is probably the area most academics are familiar with in terms of the plagiarism debate. The pros and cons of SafeAssign and Turnitin were discussed by Kevin O’Rourke and Claire McAvinia of DIT, and the core message seemed to be that this…
A future direction for clickers?
Clickers are routinely used to survey class on their understanding of topics or test their knowledge with quizzes, and as technology has developed, there have been clever ways of doing this (See: The Rise and Rise…). One issue that arises is that as lecturers, we don’t have a convenient way to know what individual students think, or what their answer is. Enter this recent paper from BJET, An Augmented Lecture Feedback System to support Learner and Teacher Communication. This paper describes a clicker-based system, but instead of (or as well as) a lecturer viewing a chart of responses, the lecturer sees the…
Exam scheduling: semester or end of year?
Journal Club #6: G. Di Pietro, Bulletin of Economic Research, 2012, 65(1), 65 – 81. [Link] It is my experience in academic discourse that when a change is proposed, those advocating the change rely on “gut instinct” and “common sense” while those opposing it seek evidence from the literature. My own institution is currently planning a significant change in the academic calendar, and while thinking about this, I came across this paper. The author examines whether an institution’s reform involving moving semester exams to end of year exams had a negative impact on student performance. The system under study had two…
When we grade, do we mean what we say?
The aim of the “Journal Club” is to present a summary of a journal article and discuss it in the comments below or on social meeja. The emphasis is not on discussing the paper itself (e.g. methodology etc) but more what the observations or outcomes reported can tell us about our own practice. Get involved! It’s friendly. Be nice. And if you wish to submit your own summary of an article you like, please do. If you can’t access the paper in question, emailing the corresponding author usually works (This article is available online at the author’s homepage. PDF). Comments on this article…