Developing Computer-Based Multimedia Examination Formats for the Sciences

评估学生学习和表现的过程是K-12年级教学的核心，也是学院和大学水平的核心。然而，纸笔考试既不能提供互动的形式，也不能提供真实的情境化形式。理想情况下，测试应该是学习的一个组成部分。我们建议利用先进的多媒体软件首次开发真正的交互式评估，这将使我们能够更好地评估学习并改进教学。每次作业、测验或考试的内容都可以从课堂、阅读材料和实验中汲取全部材料，并可以纳入科学领域的最新发现，从而模糊了教学和研究之间的区别。简短回答和互动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。考试模板将被生成，这样教师就可以“复制、剪切和粘贴”他们的材料，以制作他们的考试。该计划将随机选择按内容和难度排序的问题，以便每个学生都能接受“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、正确的回答和正确回答的理由。成绩将自动计算并作为考试的最后一屏报告，以便立即反馈给学生。该提案将在初中、高中和大学的五个不同的科学学科中建立应用程序。我们的努力将影响德州大学大量本科理科课程的大量学生，其中很大一部分是女性和少数族裔。该程序和模板在大多数其他学科中也很有用，并且在项目完成时发布这些模板将使我们的结果随时可供其他教师使用。预计以电脑为基础的多媒体考试不久将成为评价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.