Submitted by Joanne Stewart / Hope College on Mon, 08/26/2013 - 22:20

 

Dear Colleagues:

The ACS Exams Institute has been working on a method to add criterion referencing to our exams.  We have developed a content map feature that we will use to accomplish this.  The next step in the process is called "alignment", in which panels of experts look at items from exams and align them with the content map.  Concurrent to this, we have developed a rubric for assigning a complexity rating to exam items. We will investigate the objective complexity of inorganic chemistry exam items ultimately to integrate the complexity analysis into the alignment process.  We will be working on both of these tasks at the ACS Meeting in Indianapolis.  On behalf of Tom Holme and the Exams Institute, I would like to invite you to attend one or more of these sessions as your schedule allows.
 

The morning of Monday, September 9th will be for the alignment session (9 am -12 noon) and Monday afternoon will be for the complexity analysis and discussion (1:30 pm - 4:30 pm).  Both will be held in JW Room 309 of the JW Marriott (10 S. West Street).


I am inviting you to consider joining us for either or both of these sessions if you are at the ACS meeting in Indianapolis.  Most of our volunteers find that working on an alignment process or complexity analysis gives them an interesting new perspective on how they look at the material in courses they teach.  The work itself is collaborative, so you also get to bounce ideas off of your colleagues as you do the alignment or analysis.

ACS Exams provides participants who attend our half-day workshops with a per-diem that is set at half the value of our full-day committee volunteer per-diem. Thus, while we value the time of participants greatly, the specific monetary remuneration is $100 for each half-day workshop that an individual attends.


If you can attend, we would appreciate hearing from you so we can be sure to have enough materials with us. Thank you for your efforts on behalf of ACS Exams and we look forward to having the opportunity to work with some of you again at the upcoming meeting.


All the best,
Kristen

Associate Director
ACS Exams Institute
0213 Gilman Hall
Ames, IA  50011
(800) 854-1672
Email:  kmurphy@uwm.edu