Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, 800 E. Kirkwood Ave. Bloomington, IN 47405. afeig@indiana.edu
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COMPARISON OF PRE- AND POST-TEST RESULTS. The students were asked 9 questions the first day of class as part of the pre-test. The same 9 questions were used on quiz 14 administered the last day of class. The pre-tests were not returned to the students after grading and the students were not informed that the pre-test would be used again at the end of the semester. A comparison of pre-test and post-test results shows very dramatic improvement over the course of the term. Improvement (I) has been defined below, where Spre and Spost are the fraction of the students who answered the question correctly on the pre- and post-test, respectively. The improvement function reflects how much of the possible improvement was realized by participation in C484. Many fewer students improved on question 6, but the majority of the class new the answer to that question prior to enrollment.
I = (Spost -Spre)/(1-Spre)
| Question | Spre (%) | Spost (%) | I (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Draw a generic amino acid | 31 | 89 | 94 |
| 2. What types of bonds connect amino acids in proteins? | 67 | 89 | 67 |
| 3. What molecule stores genetic information and how large is the human genome? | 48 | 89 | 48 |
| 4. What biomolecule contains alpha helices? | 47 | 85 | 72 |
| 5. What is cellulose? | 38 | 84 | 74 |
| 6. Enzymes always work best at neutral pH (T/F)? | 88 | 93 | 42 |
| 7. All enzymes are made of protein (T/F)? | 41 | 91 | 85 |
| 8. Where would you find the amino acid sequence of a protein? | 6 | 84 | 83 |
| 9. Where would you find the 3-D structure of a protein? | 8 | 82 | 80 |
| Overall mean | 36 | 89 | 83 |
| N | 71 | 51 | |
| Enrollment on date administered | 76 | 58 |
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS AND CORRELATIONS. The table below shows the class average on the various
types of assessments. The grades on the quizzes were slightly
lower than on the problem sets or exams as expected. There were
no apparent correlations between scores on the pre-test and class
performance.
| ASSIGNMENT TYPE | MEAN |
|---|---|
| quizzes | 70 ± 18% |
| problem sets | 82 ± 13% |
| exams | 78 ± 13% |
Final grades were distributed based on a class curve with the mean for the course set as a B. Very few students fail C484 as those students who do not perform at the requisite level tend to remove themselves from the course prior to the automatic drop date.
| Final grade distribution | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | A+ | A | A- | B+ | B | B- | C+ | C | C- | D/F |
2000 |
0 |
10 |
2 |
7 |
11 |
2 |
5 |
9 |
1 |
0 |
| 2001 | 1 | 13 | 8 | 1 | 17 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 1 | 2 |