Assessment as a Learning Tool

Three survey instruments have been developed as interactive Word forms and administered to students in General Chemistry.

þ  Excelet Usage in General Chemistry (general survey after using a number of Excelets)    
þ  Exploring Radioactive Decay (based on second semester General Chemistry activity)
þ  Cookie Stack Height (introduction to modeling data, used in first semester General Chemistry)

Results from student surveys:

By far students find the interactive visual graphs as an aid to learning concepts and prefer them over the static textbook versions.  The summarized results from students in first and second semester general chemistry are given below.  My thanks to the students of Prince George's Community College for providing the feedback!

Further discussion is coming!

Making the Excelet the Assessment Tool:

This involves using the capabilities of Excel to build an assessment instrument and combining the interactive graphs and variables to make the instrument dynamic in nature.  See Using Spreadsheets to Assess Learning for more information.  Here is a draft of the assessment Excelet on How are your graphical interpretation skills? to explore what students know or don't know.

Back to the Developer's Guide to Excelets

Scott A. Sinex        Prince George's Community College       6/2008