# Social psychology (psychology)/Assessment/Exam/Instructor notes

* An open-book, 3-hour exam, 150-item exam was reasonable successful
* Average mark was 71%
* In previous years the exam had been too hard (not enough time; 2 hours); added one hour (2 → 3 hours)
* Reduced draft from 165 to 150 items
* Redrafted and reselected the items in 2008.
** Approximately 2 to 3 days was put in – quite a lot – to set this up even better for this year and the future.
** There is still work to be done in this area
*** In 2009, prepare the items more continuously and systematically as part of tackling each topic.
*** Become more clear about whether the items are to be stored in Respondus or other format – currently Respondus files are the master, but this is somewhat inefficient in selecting items.
*** The 2007 idea was to create a large database with randomly selected items by topic area, using Respondus
**** In part, this is to allow the creation of random quizzes, etc. e.g., in Moodle
**** The 2008 idea is create a reasonably standard exam, and use the other items for a test bank which could be on Wikiversity and/or Moodle for each chapter
* Moderated by: Melisah Feeney (see email comments)
* Faculty review by: Laurie Grealish (see .doc comments)
* Item length in many cases was reduced.
* Item style was made more consistent e.g., with punctuation.
* American spelling changed to Australian.
* Manual formatting applied
** Keep with next
** Hanging indent for answers
* Reviewed item response frequency analysis from 2007 and redrafted accordingly; some items were also further redrafted further away from the textbooks items.
* Added items to cover extra Environmental and tutorial topics
* Ch9 – Selection didn't match the Respondus allocation – re-allocate the Respondus allocation accordingly.
* Ch10 – Attraction For items 104-110 no selection was made – adjust Respondus; instead selected 2 from 35-46
* Ch11 – Selections didn't match Respondus; adjust Respondus
* Ch12 – Selections didn't match Respondus; adjust Respondus
* Process
* Master databases by chapter/topic in Respondus
* Planned number of items per topic (170)
* Manually selected items per topic, based on Sets in Respondus
* Manually merged and reordered items for exam draft
* Removed 5 items to bring to 165 (didn't record which ones)
* To do
** This exam could/should be used as basis for future exams (build and improve on it)
** Eventually further reduced to 150 items
** Retrospectively create a 2008 Ch plan for the 150 items as the new Master. (see notes page in Ch plan)
** Suggest re-using with relatively minor modification, based on:
** Should get some up-front planning thought and on-going preparation during Semester
** Check/concentrate more on lecture content (as I prepare each lecture).
** Conduct item response analysis. Proof-reading could further reveal useful copy-edits.
** Most efficient would probably be to revise the word processing version; making master adjustments in the Respondus database.
** To find item numbers, text search the 165 item with codes draft from 2008 (could make a new one of these up).
** Request to schedule this at a similar time as 2008 - preferably Fri am in the first week of exams in 6B4*. Alternatively it could be Wed or Thu am of exams.
** Alternatively, this could be an ideal unit to deliver an online Moodle exam. However, to be fair, this would require either regular Moodle quizzed (by topic) or a practice exam.