Building a Database for the Historical Analysis of the General Chemistry Curriculum Using ACS General Chemistry Exams as Artifacts

• Autores: Cynthia J. Luxford, Kimberly J. Linenberger, Jeffrey R. Raker, John Y. Baluyut, Jessica J. Reed, Chamila De Silva, Thomas A. Holme
• Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 92, Nº 2, 2015, págs. 230-236
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • As a discipline, chemistry enjoys a unique position. While many academic areas prepared "cooperative examinations" in the 1930s, only chemistry maintained the activity within what has become the ACS Examinations Institute. As a result, the long-term existence of community-built, norm-referenced, standardized exams provides a historical artifact about the nature of content coverage in courses that stretches over decades. This work reports efforts to capture information and formulate it into a database about general chemistry content coverage over the past 20 years. Roughly 2000 items have been characterized in several ways, including (i) content, using an Anchoring Concepts Content Map; (ii) item construct, such as the presence of symbolic or visual information; and (iii) cognitive processing required, in terms of recall, algorithmic, or conceptual thinking.