Developing Computer-Based Multimedia Examination Formats for the Sciences

评估学生的学习和表现的过程是K-12年级教学的核心，也是在学院和大学一级的教学。然而，纸质和铅笔考试既不提供互动的形式，也不提供真实的情景形式。理想情况下，考试应该是学习不可或缺的一部分。我们建议利用多媒体软件的进步，第一次开发真正的互动评估，使我们能够更好地评估学习和改进教学。每项作业、测验或考试的内容可以从讲课、阅读材料和实验室的各种材料中提取，并可以结合最新的科学发现，从而模糊了教学和研究之间的区别。简答题和交互式问题解决将与文本、2-D图像、视频剪辑、声音和3-D动画相结合。将生成考试模板，以便教师可以将他们的材料复制、剪切和粘贴到格式中，以生成他们的考试。该计划将被设计为随机选择问题，这些问题按照内容和难度级别进行排序，以便每个学生都能接受一次“独特但统一”的考试。复习程序将为学生重新运行练习，并显示问题以及学生的回答、正确回答和正确回答的理由。分数将被自动计算并报告为考试的最后一个屏幕，以便立即反馈给学生。这项提议将在初中、高中和大学层面的五个不同的科学学科建立应用程序。我们的努力将影响德克萨斯大学大型本科生理科课程的大量学生，其中很大一部分是女性和少数民族。该计划和模板也将在大多数其他学科中有用，在项目完成时发布这些模板将使我们的结果易于为其他教师所用。预计以计算机为基础的多媒体考试不久将成为评估学生学习和表现的标准。

The process of evaluating student learning and performance lies at the core of teaching in K-12 grades and also at the college and university levels. However, paper and pencil exams offer neither an interactive or authentic contextualized format. Testing should ideally he an integral part of learning. We propose to use advances in multimedia software to develop for the first time truly interactive evaluations that will permit us to better assess learning and improve teaching. The content of each assignment, quiz, or exam can draw from the full range of materials from lecture, the readings, and laboratories, and can incorporate the most recent discoveries in the sciences, thus blurring the distinction between teaching and research. Short answer and interactive problem-solving questions will be integrated with text, 2-D images, video clips, sound, and 3-D animations. Exam templates will be produced so that the instructor can "copy, cut, and paste" their materials into the format to produce their exams. The program will be designed to randomly select questions that are sorted by content as well as level of difficulty so that each student receives a "unique but uniform" exam. A review program will rerun the exercise for the student and display the question along with the student's response, the correct response, and a justification for the correct response. Grades will be automatically calculated and reported as the last screen of the exam for immediate feedback to the student. This proposal will build applications in five different science disciplines at the middle school, high school, and university level. Our effort will impact large numbers of students in the large undergraduate science courses at the University of Texas, and a significant proportion of these are women and ethnic minorities. The program and the templates will also be useful in most other disciplines, and the publication of these templates at the completion of the project will make our results readily available to oth er instructors. It is anticipated that computer-based multimedia examinations will soon become the standard for evaluating student learning and performance.