Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

[Phys-L] Re: Research on Student Response Systems



Antti, thanks for the kind words about TUG-K. A lot of work (several
years worth) went into its development.

I discussed this in an April 8, 2004 email to the list, but it is worth
reviewing. We are rewriting the test because several people put it on
the web, potentially available to students. (I've fielded email from
as far away as Singapore from students who wanted a copy of a test to
"help them study." Usually they weren't direct enough to say their
teacher was going to give them the test for a grade, but I could tell
that's what was happening. That's not a good use of these tests, by
the way.) I had two web pages, one with a public link that provided
information on quite a few different tests that my group and others
have created. It's still online at
<http://www.ncsu.edu/per/TestInfo.html>. The second page actually
allowed people to download the tests themselves. At the top of the
page it said in big, bold, red letters "Do not link any other web page
to this page!" Once such an external link is created, web crawling
search engines can find it. People who found a test described on the
first page could email me to request the address of the second page.
This simplified my life a great deal since I typically receive 5-10
requests for different tests every week. I had some "boilerplate" that
I could use to quickly respond to teachers' email, providing the URL of
the test access page. It was much easier than attaching files to my
reply email. One person using the page for some research cited my
access page as a source. Their paper was turned into a pdf and put on
the web. Web crawlers soon got smart enough to "read" pdf files and
they harvested the URL. The paper author didn't know this would
happen, so I consider this to be an accident. The other folks to put
the restricted link online run a university assessment team and were
listing a bunch of sites that faculty might find useful. No excuse
there, as far as I'm concerned. (They still haven't removed the link,
even though it goes nowhere.) Ironically, at the bottom of the
test-requesting email of someone who put the entire copyrighted TUG-K
online, they quoted Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #285 "No good deed goes
unpunished."

As far as the new TUG-K goes, it will be completely new. It looks like
there will be 28 items on it. We are still in the process of
developing and evaluating questions, so that number could change
depending on the statistics we get back from trying it out. We've been
at it for about a year and have at least another 6-12 months before it
will be ready for release.

Bob Beichner
NCSU Physics


On Feb 15, 2005, at 4:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:34:00 +0200
From: Savinainen Antti <antti.savinainen@KUOPIO.FI>
Subject: Re: Research on Student Response Systems

Hello!

Robert Beichner wrote:

"No luck so far, although an undergraduate
and I are updating TUG-K(1) and I'm helping another
student work on a geometric optics instrument."

I'm curious to know:

1) Why is an updating of TUG-K necessary?
2) What aspects of TUG-K are being updated?
E.g., will there be more questions than in the original?
3) When will the updated version be published?

I have great respect toward the test; I use it routinely
in my high school classes. As Richard Hake has pointed
out, TUG-K sets very high standards on designing and validating a
conceptual instrument.

Best wishes,

Antti

Antti Savinainen, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Physics and Mathematics
Kuopio Lyseo High School
Finland
E-mail: <antti.savinainen@kuopio.fi>
Website: <http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/physics/>